


Better Lost than Found

by StarlingGirl



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Halloween, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Thanksgiving, attempted emotional maturity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:39:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21810199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlingGirl/pseuds/StarlingGirl
Summary: "The overall point being that due to my own inherent failings, the Venn diagram of people I kiss and people I’m friends with is just two entirely distinct circles."Alexander often finds himself alone, watching the straggling knots of his peers spilling out across the campus with private jokes and laughter tucked between them like a privilege, andwanting.So when he meets John Laurens, with his easy conversation and wry humour, he’s determined to keep him as a friend.Which, regrettably, means not kissing him, no matter how much they might both want it. How hard can it be, right?
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens
Comments: 83
Kudos: 208





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This started off as a trashy 'we both get abandoned by our friends in a corn maze' au meet-cute, and spiralled rapidly out of control.
> 
> So what I'm trying to say here is that, while the first two chapters may seem oddly maze-heavy, the setting is transient and the back half will barely mention mazes at all. Promise.
> 
> Also, it's slow-burn, but it is Alexander/John endgame, I promise!

“This is a terrible idea,” John says glumly, staring up at the gaudy orange sign advertising ‘An A-maze-ing Halloween Maze!’, with wonky, hand-painted jack-o-lanterns painted at the corners, grinning down at him ominously. “It’s not even Halloween for another two weeks.”

The day is unseasonably warm, fall offering one final, desperate flourish before it concedes to winter. The sun, already creeping low in the sky, manages to spill half-hearted warmth across their faces as they gather in front of the sign.

“What’s that, Laurens?” Hercules says loudly, cupping his hand around his ear and cocking his head like he’s half-deaf. “Your bitch ass is scared?”

Lafayette snickers. John scowls, and shoves his hands into his pockets.

“Hey, I watched _Children of the Corn_ at a very impressionable age, okay? That shit sticks with you.” He’s not convincing anyone, he knows; Hercules and Lafayette are already laughing at him, not even bothering to hide their amusement. When they’d suggested this outing—when they’d convinced him to drive them out of town—it had been with the promise of apple cider donuts and orchards. The words 'corn maze' had been tacked on the end like an afterthought, and absolutely no mention had been made of the word Halloween.

John ought to have known better.

“I do not think allowing sacrificial cornfield murders would be a good business plan,” Lafayette tells him soothingly, but he still flashes a fond and mocking grin at John in the grainy yellow light of the fall afternoon. “We will probably be fine.”

“Probably,” John mocks, in an exaggerated French accent. Lafayette tips his chin up with a little _hmph,_ refusing to rise to the bait. Hercules claps John on the shoulder, and begins to steer him along the path and towards the maze’s entrance.

“We got you, Laurens. It’s a family-friendly thing. How scary can it be?”

* * *

“ _Alexander._ ”

The tone in which Aaron Burr frames his name ought to give Alexander some pause. There’s frustration balled up in it, exasperation and defeat and warning all fighting a familiar war to reign supreme over those four syllables. It’s a sure sign that Aaron is quickly approaching his limit.

Alexander, to whom limits are nothing more than arbitrary constraints observed by _other_ people and best off entirely ignored, does not stop.

“—I know, I know. This isn’t your idea of quote-fun-unquote. Newsflash, Burr: your idea of fun is a cryptic crossword accompanied by an introspective radio talk show at an unobtrusively low volume. It’s frankly a travesty, and there’s only so far that pity can stretch before I’m forced to intervene you know?” Alexander pauses to breathe. Aaron makes the most of it.

“If you hate it so much, then you could try leaving me to enjoy it _alone._ ”

Alexander ignores that logic, breezing right by it. Sure, he could do something other than sit across the table from Aaron at nine pm every Friday night, taking half-hearted notes from a textbook with his knee bouncing fast from the effort of biting down conversation that will only earn him a dark look. But the sad truth is, he hasn’t really got anywhere else to go.

It’s Aaron’s place, or the library, or his own shoebox room in an apartment that’s all at once too loud—the knocking of the pipes, the woman upstairs who vacuums at the weirdest times, the indistinct thump of the bass-heavy music spilling through from the bar downstairs—and too quiet, empty of anything he can really _connect_ to. It sounds pathetic, but Aaron is his only friend.

Between law school, his internship, the variety of part-time jobs he holds down, and his own never-ending stack of personal projects, he hasn’t exactly found the time to go out and acquire a wide and varied acquaintance. Anyway, it’s hard—how do adults even meet new people? The majority of his classmates seem to tolerate him at best, or to despise him at worst. He usually doesn’t stick around at any one job long enough to form lasting connections with his colleagues, none of whom he exactly considers riveting conversationalists, anyway.

Student societies would be a start, he supposes, but he’s too damn _busy._ Realistically, in his hierarchy of needs, ‘success’ comes way above ‘friendship’, which is hovering somewhere halfway down the pyramid. Right below ‘food with actual vegetables in it’ and ‘more than four consecutive hours of sleep a night’.

At least, that’s what he tells himself. The truth is that recently he’s started feeling the unhappy tendrils of loneliness unfurling to grip him a little tighter than they ever have before; somewhere along the way, he’s found himself watching the straggling knots of his peers spilling out across the campus with private jokes and laughter tucked between them like a privilege, and _wanting._

He’s not one to sit back and idly wish. So here he is, dragging Aaron out of his comfort zone if not kicking and screaming, then certainly with a raised eyebrow and a cool look of disdain. _Adventuring_. Trying new things, as if he might be able to coax some more meaningful blossom of friendship to grow between them. Aaron will appreciate it later, probably, even if he hadn’t technically speaking been aware until this moment that he’d be participating in this misguided attempt at life improvement.

“C’mon,” Alexander wheedles. “Think of it as a break from your routine. A shake-up. It’ll invigorate you.”

“It’s a corn maze,” Aaron observes drily. “It’s for _children_ , Alexander.”

“What? No, it’s not. Fun has no age restriction.”

“Please, do explain how getting lost with you in a field of corn is supposed to be fun,” Aaron says flatly, but Alexander can already tell that he’s giving in. Sensing weakness, Alexander does what he always does: applies pressure, and just keeps pushing.

“It’ll be a bonding experience,” he offers, decisively. Then he catches the look on Aaron’s face and sighs, throwing his hands up. “If it’s for children, then it’ll be easy. We’ll be in and out in no time. I’ll be happy because you humoured me, and you’ll be home in time for your stupid grandpa routine.”

Aaron sighs, and his hands gestures fractionally at his side, and Alexander knows that he’s won.

“Great,” he says, triumphantly. “Let’s go and make this corn maze our _bitch_. How hard can it be?”

* * *

“Motherfucking fuck, _fuck—!_ ”

“You know, John, your vocabulary becomes somewhat limited when you are frightened,” Lafayette observes. Hercules is laughing as John does his best to hide behind him, clutching at his arm for comfort.

“Fuck you!” he bites out.

“As I said,” Lafayette says solemnly. “It is only a mannequin, John.”

John glares at the mannequin from behind Hercules. It’s dressed in a rumpled witch’s costume, clearly pulled straight from its plastic packaging with no attempt to smooth out the wrinkles in the cheap material. On its face is a plastic Halloween mask, grinning and green-skinned, that’s slipped down and is sitting lop-sided and all the more unsettling for it. The witches hat perched atop the whole ensemble is at a jaunty angle; Hercules reaches out and straightens it.

“I wasn’t expecting it,” John says between gritted teeth.

“Y’know,” Hercules says thoughtfully, “half the reason I enjoy seeing you scared shitless is that you’re usually the one who runs _towards_ dangerous, terrifying things.” Lafayette makes a noise of agreement. John backs away from the dead end that the mannequin is guarding, not comfortable turning his back on the badly dressed demon-witch-thing while his heart is still racing.

“Yeah, well,” he says darkly. “You can’t punch a ghost in the face.”

“Because they’re incorporeal,” Lafayette agrees sagely.

“Because they’re not real,” Hercules corrects. “And because you’re too much of a baby.”

John flips him off with both hands, maintaining fuck-you eye contact until he’s shuffled all the way back around the corner. His friends join him and he waits, stubbornly, for one of them to take the lead. Hercules does so, rolling his eyes but grinning too.

“How long have we even been in here?” John asks, following cautiously after Hercules. Lafayette, taking up the rear, checks his phone. It’s not dark yet, but they’re well into the grainy, grey light of late afternoon, and he suspects that if they don’t pick up their pace, it may well be by the time they make it out.

“About forty minutes,” he says. “The very bored man at the entrance says it usually takes ninety minutes, _oui_?”

“Great,” John mutters under his breath, and slides his own phone out of his pocket. Whether he’s hoping to find that Lafayette has lied about the time, or he’s desperately texting someone for emotional support, Lafayette isn’t entirely sure—but it gives him the chance to meet Hercules’ gaze over John’s ducked head. Hercules is _grinning_ , all mischief, and he tips his head silently.

There’s a scarecrow in another cheap, plastic mask hanging from a tall pole, empty clothes plucked gently by the soft breeze. Hercules glances at John and lifts a finger to his lips. Lafayette nudges John forward; John goes reluctantly, eyes still fixed on his phone.

When they draw level with it, Hercules takes a neat step behind John and pushes him forward into the scarecrow’s outstretched arms. John yelps in surprise, and then _shrieks_ when he finds himself face-to-face with the mask, lashing out on pure instinct. It’s enough to dislodge the scarecrow from its pole, and suddenly John has an armful of what startled him. He struggles against it, tangled in the loose fabric and trying to bat it away, succeeding only in a comically frantic waltz of sorts. Lafayette laughs, high and long and delighted. Hercules grabs his arm, tugs him away, and he almost trips over his feet before he manages to sort them out, running after Hercules and away from John’s inevitable wrath, amusement tangling itself loud and free through the stalks of the corn.

* * *

“ _How hard can it be?_ ” Aaron mutters from three steps behind Alexander, forty-five minutes later. “You had to say it, didn’t you, Alexander?”

“ _You’re_ the one who said it was for children!” Alexander objects, stopping short and spinning on his heel to face Aaron, one finger flying out accusingly to poke him in the chest. Aaron only groans, tipping his head back for a moment and fisting his hands at his hips as he gathers the remaining shreds of his patience.

“I may as _well_ be stuck here with a child.”

“If you’re trying to insult my intelligence, Burr, I’d like to remind you that you’re just as lost as I am, So, you know: shut your face, you _massive_ hypocrite.” Aaron levels him with a look, one that unapologetically broadcasts his opinion that he’s right and Alexander is, in every conceivable way, wrong. It settles easily on his face, a frustrating superiority that rubs Alexander up entirely the wrong way. Alexander huffs out a frustrated breath, and turns away from him one more.

“Well, _I’m_ having fun,” he lies brightly, determined not to give Aaron a chance to get all high-and-mighty. He takes a right turn at the next intersection, and then immediately turns right again. Isn’t that a thing? Only taking right turns in mazes, he’s pretty sure he read it somewhere. He clings to the promise of a logical solution, a way out of this corn-themed hell he’s unwittingly trapped them in. Spite tugs at him, drawing out more falsely bright words. “Aren’t you having fun? Those guys we passed in Ghostbusters costumes were having fun. Maybe we should have made the effort. Really committed, you know? Maybe that’s your problem, Burr, holding back like always—"

Another right-turn, and he finds himself at a dead end, a little hollow in amongst the corn that’s been filled with a pile of pumpkins carved haphazardly into grinning faces. Alexander examines them critically for a moment before he turns back to Aaron.

Or at least, turns back to where Aaron _should_ be. He frowns at the silent corn.

“Very funny,” he says flatly, and pokes his head back around the corner he’s just come from. He hardly suspects that Aaron might fling himself out from behind the corn and yell ‘boo!’, but he _does_ suspect that he’ll come face-to-face with that characteristic, disapproving stare. Pursed lips, probably. Arms folded across the chest. Maybe an impatiently tapping foot.

He finds none of these things, only more corn, shifting slightly in the breeze. He takes the next corner. Still nothing.

“Burr?” he calls out, tentatively, but receives no response. Glancing around, he tries to orient himself—this _is_ where he’d last left Aaron, right? Hard to tell, one stalk of corn looks pretty much like another. He peeks around each branch of the intersection he’s standing at. Nothing.

“Fuck,” Alexander says softly to himself, with great and genuine feeling. He talks an uncertain step towards the left-hand branch of the intersection, the one he’d opted not to turn down, and then pauses. He slides his phone out of his pocket and drops Aaron a message, just a row of question marks. He watches it send, and waits for a response.

Nothing. He waits another long minute, just in case. His phone remains mutinously silent. Somewhere close, he hears a high-pitched shriek, cut through by the sound of laughter. The laughter retreated, accompanied by the sound of running feet, corn rustling as bodies brush past. There’s still some kind of commotion going on, and it sounds like it’s just around the corner.

Checking his phone once more—Aaron has left him on read, the bastard—he lets his curiosity get the better of him. He rounds the corner, and that’s where he finds the man wrestling the scarecrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first multi-chapter fic; you can tell because I spent half an hour today debating whether having a prologue was weird.
> 
> As such, any and all feedback, comments, thoughts etcetera will be much appreciated in helping me navigate this brave new world of posting something I haven't totally finished yet. Also, [come find me on tumblr!](https://seekstrivefind.tumblr.com)


	2. Chapter One

“Do you… need some help?” Alexander offers, after a few long moments of vaguely baffled observation.

The man whips around, eyes wide, still trying to free himself from the unwelcome embrace of the scarecrow. He lets out a strangled noise as he realises some part of it is caught in his curly hair. His hands scrabble at it, face scrunched up in discomfort. “No,” he says, sharply.

“’Course not. You’ve got him on the ropes, clearly.” Alexander steps forward anyway, and after a taut second, the man lets his hands drop to make room for Alexander’s. Alexander teases a dark curl from the sharp plastic edge of the mask, making a satisfied noise when it comes free. The man shoves the scarecrow to the floor, immediately taking a step back from it.

“Thanks,” he mutters, brushing himself off. He presses his hand to his chest for a moment, then reaches up to tug his hair back into some semblance of order. Alexander watches, recognition flaring now that the distraction of the scarecrow is out of the picture.

“Don’t I know you?” Alexander asks, in place of a ‘no problem’. He frowns for a second, irritated by the half-remembered smattering of freckles, the green-grey eyes, the full lips that even now are quirking themselves up towards a half-smile that _screams_ ‘kiss me’. How do you even forget a face like that? He snaps his fingers as it hits him. “You go to Columbia Law too!”

“Right,” the man agrees. “I’ve seen you in lectures. Or heard you, I guess is more accurate. Arguing.”

Alexander grins. He’s never had much time for socialising with his classmates; between lectures and tutorials and internships and a handful of part-time jobs, he’s barely ever in one place long enough to even catch their names. But he’s only human, and he’s taken the time to notice a few pretty faces in the crowd from time to time—including this one.

Alexander isn’t sure what he’s done to earn this piece of good luck, but he’ll take it.

“Guilty as charged,” he says, tipping his head. “Alexander Hamilton.”

“John Laurens. Don’t suppose you passed two disloyal, two-faced, backstabbing traitors on your way here to rescue me?” John is glancing around, as though he half-suspects he might find someone successfully concealing themselves behind any given stalk of corn.

“Friends of yours?” Alexander asks with a laugh.

“Not anymore,” John says darkly.

“Well, listen—I too have been betrayed in the most perfidious way. So how about we combine forces to get the hell out of here? I’m prepared to fight off any particularly aggressive scarecrows for you, if that helps. I feel like I might be better at it than you are.” John snorts, and bends down to pluck something from the ground—his phone, Alexander notices—checking it over for any damage before he types something short and clearly _furious_ , and then pockets it.

“Well, if what I’ve seen in lectures is anything to go by, you could probably argue your average haunted scarecrow out of murdering us,” John says sardonically. Alexander beams, inordinately pleased. “Alright, let’s go.”

John speaks with such conviction that Alexander’s feet respond almost automatically, only for his brain to register that they’re in a _maze_ , and they’re _lost,_ and he has _no idea_ which way to go. He stumbles, his abortive step throwing him off balance. Next to him, John has done almost exactly the same, but in the opposite direction. They catch each other’s confusion and there a beat of silence before they both laugh.

John has a nice laugh. It’s low and almost musical, and it puts Alexander at ease.

He steps forward, grabs John’s arm, and turns him in a direction he’s _pretty_ sure that he hasn’t already tried, and falls in beside him.

“So, who betrayed you?” John asks, as they head down their new bearing. Alexander notices that while the question and the interest seem genuine, John’s gaze flickers repeatedly around, almost nervous, before it turns every so often back to him.

“Burr,” he says, morosely. He clutches his hands dramatically to his heart. “My first friend; my enemy. I trusted him, and he—”

“ _Aaron_ Burr?” John interrupts, in something like disbelief.

“Oh, you know him?” Alexander asks, lightly, and tries not to feel mildly bitter than even _Aaron Burr,_ crossword enthusiast and self-proclaimed intellectual hermit, has somehow managed to make more friends than he has.

“ _Of_ him, more like. They let him graduate a year early from Princeton, right? Like damn, guy must be smart as hell. We invited him to a few things, parties or whatever, but he never wanted to come.” Alexander snorts derisively, and reaches out absently to tug John’s arm, directing him down another intersection.

“Aaron Burr doesn’t _party_ ,” he says. “Even a damn corn maze is too much for him, apparently. Or maybe _I’m_ too much—wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard that—but either way he’d rather be at home with only the fucking New York Times crossword for company, or whatever.” He realises that he’s scowling, and lets his features smooth out. He flaps a dismissive hand as though to clear the air of the topic.

“In short, Burr sucks. Stop inviting him to your parties.”

“I thought he was your friend?” John grins, bumping Alexander’s shoulder with his own. Alexander lets himself sway gently to one side, righting himself again lazily.

“Your point? I can be friends with the guy and also fully aware of the fact that he’d be the worst at parties. I mean, can you imagine him in a room full of people who are just trying to get drunk, have a good time, maybe hook up? No, because he only drinks overpriced brandy, he hasn’t had a good time since NPR uploaded their _Jazz Night in America_ archives as free podcasts, and he has about as much sexual awareness as a post-menopausal gecko.”

“Wow,” John says, and his eyes do this thing where they wrinkle up a little at the edges when his smile hits. His left cheek has the faintest shadow that Alexander is pretty sure might be a dimple, and for some reason it’s deeply important to him to confirm that for sure. “Okay. Pretty damning stuff. Guess I’d better come up with someone else to invite instead. Someone who just wants to get drunk, have a good time, maybe hook up. Any ideas?”

Alexander’s brain abruptly catches up with what his mouth has been saying.

“Hah,” he says faintly. “I might know a guy. Your turn.”

John blinks at him for a moment in faint confusion. Alexander gestures towards the split in the path ahead of them; John hesitates for half a second before choosing the right-hand branch at random. They carry on like that, losing themselves in conversation even as they lose themselves further in the maze, every turn picked arbitrarily between them.

Truth be told, Alexander barely notices the time passing; John is funny, in a wry sort of way, and a good conversationalist. He’s smart, but almost seems embarrassed of it. Aside from that, he’s in possession of this inherent sense of ease that Alexander could never hope to emulate, but which draws him in effortlessly.

It feels like hours, but is in reality probably about twenty minutes, before John halts completely at the crossroads of a four-way intersection.

“Yeah, you know what? We’re never getting out of here,” he announces, with an air of defeated apathy.

“They’ll send a search party at some point,” Alexander says. “Helicopters. Dogs. Maybe one day they’ll make it to us.” John smile and picks up Alexander’s thread, rolling with it effortlessly.

“They’ll find us in a woven corn shelter,” he agrees, wistfully. “Gnawing on corn husks.”

“Only the scarecrow for company.”

“ _Naw_ , fuck that guy.” John says with enough heat to make Alexander snigger at the memory of John’s outright panic. “He’s banished from our survivor’s camp. It’s just you and me out here, Hamilton.”

“Harsh,” Alexander grins. “But I’m okay with it.”

John glances at all the paths in front of them, then kisses his teeth in frustration.

“Alright, this is hopeless. We need a vantage point,” John says. Alexander nods along and privately thinks that he’d be kind of okay with being lost for a little while longer. Isn’t this exactly what he’d wanted after all? A chance to make more friends, to hang out with someone that’s not Burr?

Not that he can realistically claim some that he first spoke to less than half an hour ago as a friend, but something about their effortless conversation or their shared sense of betrayal has eased him into a false sense of intimacy. Or maybe it’s just that John hasn’t once indicated that he’d prefer Alexander to _stop_ talking, to shut up for more than a minute. Helps that he’d met Alexander’s mindless flirtation like for like, too; it’s been known to scare people off in the past.

Outside of this maze, though, they probably don’t have all that much in common besides their studies. Alexander considers the possibility that they might not even find a reason to talk to each other without tall rows of corn hemming them in on all sides, and feels more than a little bummed out.

Realising he’s getting caught up in the what-ifs of a situation that may, at this rate, still be some time again, he shakes himself out of it.

“Did you have something in mind?” he asks, doubtfully. “Because I left my convenient folding stepladder at home.”

He’s prepared for John to shoot a joke back in return, already gearing himself up to defend against the inevitable attack on his height (or lack thereof). Instead, John huffs a laugh, takes a step closer to Alexander and then turns away and drops to one knee.

“Um,” Alexander says, through his confusion. “Listen, I know you might be scared of whatever creepy king of the scarecrows is hiding out there in the corn, but this feels like a weird time to swear fealty to it.” John laughs, and tips his head back to look up at Alexander.

“Get on my shoulders, you idiot,” he says, warmly. “Unless you rate your chances carrying me.”

And yeah, no, Alexander doesn’t—he’s about as far from a gym rat as a guy can get, and while John doesn’t exactly give off the gym-bro vibe either, he’s got broad shoulders and a trim waist and, now that Alexander’s taking the time to look, the faintly visible curve of muscle pressing at his sleeves.

“God, okay,” Alexander says, blowing out a breath that he hopes doesn’t make it obvious how weirdly nervous he suddenly his. He has a vision of trying to hook a leg over John’s shoulder, losing his balance, and wiping out face-first onto the dusty ground. They’d laugh about it, probably, but he’s already fighting an embarrassed flush at the mere possibility of making that much of an idiot out of himself.

Still, it’s not like he can say _no_.

He shuffles closer, hands hovering awkwardly for a moment as he works out how the hell to _do_ this. Then he mutters a low ‘sorry’ before he slides a hand against John’s curls for balance, leans against him and gets one leg over his shoulder. John’s hand slides onto his knee without hesitation, his tight grip warm through Alexander’s jeans. It’s reassuring enough for him to swing his other leg over, clutching at John’s head for a moment before he’s sure he’s not going to topple.

“Ready?” John asks, and Alexander can feel the low notes of his voice through his calves where they’re pressed against John’s chest.

“Sure,” he lies, and then hides a noise of distressed surprise in his throat when John stands, more smoothly and more quickly than Alexander had expected. It’s impressive and, frankly, sort of attractive; Alexander has never considered the ability to squat-press him a turn-on before. He carefully files the thought away for _later,_ when he’s not nearly six feet off the ground and horribly aware of his precarious balance, despite John’s strong hands on his thighs.

“Enjoying the view?” John asks sardonically after a moment, and Alexander recalls that he’s up here for a reason. He tears his gaze away from the fingers on his leg—John’s nails are short but neat, where Alexander’s are torn ragged from thoughtless chewing while he thinks—and looks out across the maze.

It’s still not a wildly helpful view. The corn is tall and he’s not high up enough to see the paths between the rows, only the half-shadowed suggestions of their existence below, already darkening as afternoon presses on relentlessly into evening.

“Can you turn?” he asks, and John does slowly rotating on the spot. Alexander can sort of make out one edge of the maze, but the twists and turns of it are too many, too unclear for him to fathom. He can’t see the exit.

“Ugh, fuck,” he says, and taps John’s neck. “It’s no good man, let me down.”

John does so, sinking back down to one knee and ducking his head so that Alexander can stumble forward back onto solid ground. He does so with a complete lack of grace, only just managing to avoid tripping into wall of corn in front of him. John pushes himself back to his feet and brushes off his knees.

“Seriously, nothing?” he asks, forlornly. “I thought for sure that would work.”

“You might be taller than me, but you’re not _that_ tall,” Alexander points out. “Corn is corn from any angle. Pretty sure we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.” John hums his agreement, and then sighs.

“At least everyone else is probably just as lost as we are,” John sighs. “Anyway, could be worse.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Alexander says, brandishing a finger in warning. “I swear to God, Laurens, if you say something stupid like ‘it could be raining’ and the universe hears you, and I end up having to stagger around this maze soaked to the skin, I will send Burr to every social function you ever attend, just harsh your vibe by being a complete stick-in-the-mud.”

John laughs, his head tipping back. Alexander’s gaze is drawn inexorably along the elegant line of it. It’s freckled too, just like his face.

Alexander is beginning to get the horrible feeling that this whole new-friend thing might be backfiring horribly on him. John is fun, but he’s also undeniably attractive. Something about his wide smile and his nonchalant confidence has stuck right between Alexander’s fourth and fifth ribs. It’s not that it’s a problem _per se_ , it’s just that with a frank self-awareness of his own track record, he’s painfully conscious that he can’t have his cake and eat it too.

He could sleep with John—and presuming that he’s been reading the occasional heavy-lidded look or curling smile correctly, John would probably be down with that— _or_ they could be friends. Historically, one has always pretty much been the end of the other. Historically, that’s never stopped him before. But where he’s usually an instant gratification kind of guy, he’s still nursing that hard little knot of uncharacteristic loneliness low in his belly, only amplified by Burr’s abandonment.

Friends. He can manage just friends, right? How hard can it be?

“I meant ‘cause we found each other,” John explains earnestly, the casual admission presented without any trace of self-consciousness. Alexander realises he’s still staring at the little collection of three freckles just at the juncture of John’s neck and shoulder, and tears his gaze back up to John’s face. John tips his head towards the left-hand path. “Either way, we won’t get anywhere standing still.”

“Very wise,” Alexander says, trying not to think about how dry his mouth is right now. John, entirely unaware of his growing internal struggle, hums his appreciation of the compliment. “So, why are you here? If you hate scarecrows so much, I mean. I’ve never actually been to a corn maze before, Halloween-themed or otherwise, but I’d assume they’re kind of par for the course.” John sends him a sideways look that he can’t quite interpret.

“My friends wanted to come,” John says, after a beat. “I’m the only one with a car. And I _don’t_ hate scarecrows, just for the record.”

“Yeah? Sure seems that way to me.” Alexander flashes John a grin. “Or did that one just look at you real funny?”

“Hilarious,” John says dryly. “It’s just the whole—Halloween thing, you know?” John wiggles his fingers, trying to convey a concept that Alexander can’t quite grasp.

“You only hate them during October?” Alexander presses. John wrinkles his nose up, frustrated by his inability to explain. It’s adorable. Alexander tries not to notice.

“I’m just _so_ ready for everything to jump scare me that I sorta jump scare myself with it,” he says at last. “I dunno. It’s dumb, I’m not actually a scaredy-cat.” For the first time, John looks a little uncomfortable.

“I am,” Alexander says brightly, because the last thing he wants is John clamming up on him. “I hate horror movies. _Hate_ them. Usually I’m a logician, you know? But in the face of creepy clowns in sewers, or possessed china dolls, I just freak the fuck out. I think it’s the music, if I’m honest—I’ve always been pretty connected to music, emotionally, or whatever. A good horror score just pushes all my fear buttons. Which, I guess that’s the point, but also: _fuuuuck._ Goodbye sleep for the next two days. Not that I get much in the first place.”

John huffs a breath of laughers; Alexander feels relief nipping at his smile, pleased to have drawn John away from his embarrassment.

“And yet you still offered to fight off the Halloween scarecrows for me,” John observes. “How gallant.”

“Yeah, if the scarecrow brings his own orchestra, then I guess it’s every man for himself.” The path they’re on has begun to curve around, and Alexander has the horrible feeling that it’s a spiral that will lead them absolutely nowhere. He glances at John, and finds his own doubt reflected back at him. He shrugs, and they continue onwards down the tightly coiled path.

“Jesus _fuck_!”

John’s exclamation startles Alexander more than the sudden appearance of the reaching plastic skeleton does. He laughs, high and wild, and realises that John is grabbing towards his hand. In some half-hearted attempt at self-preservation, Alexander curls his fingers around Johns wrist instead, and tugs them back out of view of the prop.

John’s skin is warm beneath his cold fingers, and he can feel the accelerated thrum of his pulse, a jack-rabbit stutter.

“Jeez, Laurens, it feels like your heart is about to give out.” Alexander forgets about self-preservation for a second and presses his other hand to John’s chest, slipping it under the edge of his open jacket to feel his heart. “Really got you, huh?”

Alexander looks up, realises how close they’re standing—remembers that thirty seconds ago he’d been chanting the word _friends_ to himself, over and over—and moves to pull his hand away. John foils his plan by covering it with his own. Alexander swallows.

“It got me,” John admits, and his voice is a little hoarse, carries the barest of tremblings hooked at the edge of his words that doesn’t feel quite like fear. “But to be fair, my heart has been going pretty good for a while, now.”

“Yeah?” Alexander asks, because he’s stuck on the look in John’s eyes. Frank and warm and open and a little hopeful, cut through with something altogether more wicked that’s causing Alexander’s stomach to wriggle around hotly.

“Yeah. Would it be weird if I, uh—kissed you right now?”

The obvious answers are laid in front of him, neither complicated. ‘Yes’ or ‘no’ would suffice, and determine quite clearly John’s next course of action. Instead Alexander, ever contrary, sucks in a breath and licks his lips and asks, “—why?”

“Why would it be weird?” John asks, smile hitching but already looking a little put out.

“Why would you want to kiss me?” Alexander clarifies. He can hear his own heartbeat now, too, in his ears; a faintly echoing rush like a distant ocean at storm, thankless waves thundering towards unyielding cliffs. He wonders if he’s the wave or the cliff, in this metaphor.

John reads an answer into the question. He drops his hand from Alexander’s, takes a shuffling half-step back so that there’s space between them once more. It’s a little easier to breathe, to think, but Alexander still regrets it.

“I thought—sorry, man. Guess I thought you’d be into it.” John’s apologetic but not self-conscious, a little awkward but not necessarily embarrassed. Alexander wonders idly if he’s been in this position before, and then shakes himself mentally, desperately trying to figure out what he even wants to say.

Usually, he’s better than this when there’s talking involved.

“I’m not _not_ down,” he says, and taps his fingers against John’s sternum where they’re still resting, his arm stretched out to bridge the gap between them. “You’re hot as fuck, man. And funny. I meant more like—what are your intentions?” He cringes even as he says it. John only laughs. Alexander is sure he can feel it ricocheting around the hollow cage of John’s ribs.

“Worried about your honour?” John asks. His tone is softly teasing, but then his smile fades into something just a little more honest. Tentatively, his fingers come back up to cover Alexander’s, leaving plenty of time for him to pull away. He doesn’t.

“Joke’s on you if you think I’ve got any honour to be worried about,” Alexander says, quirking a smile. “But, no. What I’m actually asking is whether this is just a sexy-scary corn maze smooch since we both just so _happen_ to be here—”

“Honestly? I’ve sort of been thinking about it since I first saw you _decimate_ Jefferson in class.”

“Oh,” Alexander says, and blinks. “Right. You’re welcome. It’s a service I’m only too happy to provide.” He’s losing his footing here, and mentally scrambles to get back to metaphorical solid ground. John’s not helping, shifting closer to him again, continuing to talk.

“I mean, it was mostly in an abstract hot-guy-from-class kind of way, but then here we are. Seemed pretty stupid for me to pass up on the opportunity when it seemed like you were flirting?” John leaves it as a question, but doesn’t want for an answer. “So if you’re worried that I’m just looking for a spur-of-the-moment, torrid, corn maze fling—”

Alexander whips his hand back, sliding it out from under John’s like he’s been burned. He swallows, and sticks both of his hands into his pockets for lack of anything better to do with them. John’s brow furrows in confusion, and Alexander can hardly blame the guy. Between his own wavering restraint and his attempts to work out what John is actually after, he’s not giving out the most coherent signals right now.

“Hah. Here’s the thing, John Laurens,” he says, taking the time to arrange his works before he speaks them. “I really like you. I mean, if the past half-hour is anything to go by. And therein lies my problem.”

John’s frown deepens. “It’s a problem… that you like me?”

“Yes,” Alexander says, nodding emphatically and warming to his line of argument. “Because I want to be your friend. And, not to be crass about it, but I’m more… hit-it-and-quit, you know? _Totally_ torrid corn maze affair material. After that—well, my track record is kind of shitty, and I don’t wanna fuck up what seems like it might be a really great relationship just because I couldn’t keep it in my pants.”

Alexander waves flaps a hand, vaguely, trying to convey his failing in long-term emotional connections with one, erratic movement. John purses his lips, scrunches up one side of his face. Alexander waits, uneasy in the knowledge that he might be screwing up the friend thing _and_ the kiss thing. It’ll be a real kick in the teeth if he comes out of this evening with a net gain of absolutely nothing.

“Okay,” John says eventually, and something unclenches somewhere in Alexander’s chest.

“Okay?” he echoes.

“Yeah. I mean—better to figure out now that you’re a total dog and I’m a hopeless romantic, right?” John’s smiling as he says it, and Alexander’s unsettled that he feels like there’s something off about it. It feels like an intimacy he hasn’t earned. Then again, reading people? Not necessarily his strong point.

“Right,” he agrees. “Though total dog is—probably not the best description. ‘Human disaster’, maybe. The overall point being that due to my own inherent failings, the Venn diagram of people I kiss and people I’m friends with is just two entirely distinct circles. Sorry.”

“It’s cool,” John says, and sounds like he means it.

“Can I just check something real quick though?” Alexander asks. John nods, curiously. Alexander hooks his fingers under the hem of John’s t-shirt and lifts, peeking underneath; John makes a surprised noise and half-raises his arms out of the way on instinct, but doesn’t stop him. Alexander catches sight of smooth skin, littered unevenly with dark freckles. John isn’t ripped, or anything, but there’s a distinct lie of faint shadow down the centre of his abdomen, and twin lines arching elegantly down towards his hips in a neat vee.

“Damn,” Alexander says, appreciative and filled with regret, and then lets John’s shirt drop. “Alright, I’m done. Let’s get the hell out of here. Friends?”

“Friends,” John confirms, brushing a hand down the front of his shirt to resettle it, and they turn once more to the task of escaping this goddamn maze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reader, little did they know.
> 
> Leave love, leave questions, [come bother me on tumblr.](https://seekstrivefind.tumblr.com)
> 
> Next chapter sometime before Christmas; it felt weird just posting the prologue so I posted the first two together??


	3. Chapter Two

If Alexander’s worried that he might have made everything weird, his concern dissipates soon enough. He and John fall easily back into conversation as they try and navigate the maze, the same effortless back-and-forth. Alexander nobly takes the corners first, ready to defend against further Halloween-themed surprises.

They pass a giggling group of younger teens, hands linked and scurrying through the maze at speed, pressing themselves into the corn to let them past—but other than that, they could be the only two people left in this goddamn corn-field.

It’s another twenty minutes at least before Alexander turns a corner and sucks in a surprised breath. John halts immediately hands already half-raised to warn off whatever dollar-store bullshit is out to get them this time, but he lowers them when Alexander turns back to him with a wide-eyed look of awe on his face.

“John,” he says, reverently. “We’ve done it. _The way out._ ”

John steps around behind him, sees the open space where sever paths converge on a wooden arch marked ‘EXIT’. He whoops.

“Suck it, you spooky fucks!” he calls back into the maze, and then he shoves Alexander forwards, laughing as he almost trips over his feet. They practically jog out of the maze.

Beyond the exit lies a collection of little wooden booths, crowded together—hot drinks, apple cider, donuts—and little huddles of people spilling out around them. Parents wait impatiently for children and families reward their success with sugary treats. John immediately yells something incoherent, and charges off.

Alexander hurries after him—hoping that he’s welcome, hoping that the post-maze world is one where he and John actually manage to become real friends—and is just in time to see John _slam_ into someone, taking them out at the waist. The guy’s bigger than John, broader and taller, but John’s got a lot of momentum behind him and, presumably, a lot of pent-up Halloween rage. They go down in a tumble of limbs, scuffling and yelping.

Slowing as he approaches the impromptu brawl, Alexander slides in next to a tall man watching the two of them wrestle on the ground with a sort of fond disinterest. Alexander gestures towards them.

“Should we, ah—?”

“ _Non_ ,” the man says. “This is just how they are. Who are you?” It’s a blunt question but it’s not rude, curiosity curling openly around the man’s expression Alexander can’t fail to notice the accent, French, and feels his own curiosity piqued in return.

“Alexander Hamilton. I saved John from a scarecrow and now we’re friends,” he says, with more confidence than he feels. On the ground, John appears to losing, wriggling around under the weight of his larger friend.

“Yeah, you hear that?” John demands, hands slapping at the broad chest above him. “I have other friends now! _Nice_ friends!”

The tall man to whom Alexander has been talking raises an eyebrow. Alexander grins, unrepentant, and shrugs.

“I’m not that nice,” he confides in a stage whisper. “I just couldn’t bear to see him looking so pathetic.”

John makes an offended noise, and finally flops back onto the ground, all the fight leaving him at once. “I’m surrounded on every side by traitors,” he mutters, casting Alexander a hurt look that Alexander returns with a sunny smile and a wink. The corners of John’s lips twitch upwards.

“I am Lafayette,” the tall man says, sticking out a hand that Alexander dutifully shakes. “And that is Hercules. And you have apparently met our John.”

Hercules hauls John to his feet, and begins brushing off the dust and dirt that have gathered on his back from where he was pinned. John wriggles away from his ministrations and squawks when he’s pulled back. Apparently seeing no way out, he submits reluctantly to the attentions like an impatient child. His expression _dares_ Alexander to comment on it.

Alexander, never one to back down from a challenge, is ready to do just that until John’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and he tips his head back in the direction of the maze.

“Well, well,” he says. “Look who it is.”

Alexander turns. Aaron Burr is strolling out of the maze, his hands casually tucked into his pockets and a damn _smile_ on his face—the very antithesis of John and Alexander’s hurried and relieved exit. His head is turned, in easy conversation with a tall, poised woman next to him, who looks distinctly out of place in a field of corn. She’s smiling too, coy. Alexander blinks.

“Aaron Burr, you absolute _asshole_ ,” he calls out loudly, already marching in his direction. Aaron’s head whips around. He looks taken aback at the sight of Alexander, says something to the woman and leaves her behind. He reaches Alexander in a few, brisk strides.

“I see you managed to find your own way out,” Aaron says evenly. Alexander scowls.

“Yeah, absolutely _no_ thanks to you. The hell was that disappearing act you pulled on me?”

“Self-preservation?” Aaron suggests drily. “Hello, John.”

Alexander glances back to find that John has appeared at his shoulder. Hercules and Lafayette are lingering a little way off, clearly doing their best to eavesdrop without looking like they’re actually intruding on the conversation. John tips his head in greeting, a simple lift of the chin that manages to tuck the slightest trace of disdain in amongst its civility. Alexander wonders whether that’s on his behalf, or whether Aaron’s apparent reluctance to engage socially had already sown the seeds of it. Either way, he appreciates the back-up.

“Burr,” John says, and then lapses back into silence.

“Did you really abandon me just because you saw someone hot?” Alexander demands, lifting a hand to point in the direction of the woman that Aaron had emerged from the maze with. Her head is down, her perfectly manicured nails tapping across her phone screen. Aaron pushes his hand back down.

“Don’t point, Alexander. It’s rude.”

“Ditching your friend for a pretty face is rude,” Alexander retorts childishly. Aaron raises an eyebrow, and allows his gaze to flick deliberately towards John for the barest of moments, which—unfair. Sure, John is undeniably beautiful, with his clear eyes and his freckles, the almost aristocratic slope of his cheekbones, but Aaron’s still the one who’d left. And anyway, Alexander has maturely opted to put the charms of John’s face to one side in favour of befriending him, instead.

He wants to make the point out loud, but it feels like kind of a weird brag. He resists.

“Theodosia got separated from her husband,” Aaron says smoothly, putting a subtle but distinct emphasis on the word _husband_. “I was just keeping her company until we could find our way out. Now, if you’re quite done throwing a tantrum, maybe we can go—?”

Aaron gestures away, past John and Hercules and Lafayette, to where the parking lot is. Alexander grinds his teeth, irritated. Aaron’s his only way back home. And yeah, maybe Alexander had lured him here under false pretences, somewhat, and maybe they didn’t have _any_ of the fun that Alexander had promised, but it still feels petty that he’s cutting the evening short so abruptly.

Especially when John is here, and John’s friends, and Alexander is so close to a chance to expand his admittedly very sad social circle.

“You can ride with me,” John murmurs, apparently able to discern Alexander’s internal struggle from his tense silence. Alexander looks at him for a moment, surprise sketched obviously on his face.

“See you later, Burr,” he says, and turns on his heel. John follows, and Alexander catches the flash of a grin before he goes, John’s smile sharp between his teeth and Aaron’s irritation hanging heavy between his brows. Lafayette and Hercules don’t look embarrassed to have been obviously listening in.

“How do you know Burr?” Hercules asks, the second that Alexander is back in earshot.

“He was the first person I met when I got here,” Alexander says with a shrug. “We study together, I guess.” Because honestly, if this evening has proven anything, it’s that calling what he and Aaron share a _friendship_ is perhaps pushing the bounds of credibility a little.

“Burr is the worst,” Lafayette announces loudly, then something seems to occur to him. He raises an elegant finger. “Wait, wait. You study with Burr, and so you must attend Columbia Law also, yes? And your name is Alexander?”

Alexander nods, and Lafayette’s eyes widen in something like comprehension, mouth forming a little ring of surprise as he looks between John and Alexander.

“Yes,” John says, patiently.

“Hey, am I missing something?” Alexander asks. “It sure feels like I’m missing something.” Hercules laughs and claps him on the shoulder, and Alexander stumbles forward half a step with it, catching himself before he can do anything quite so embarrassing as end up face-first in the dirt.

“Our John has talked a lot about you,” Lafayette says slyly, shooting John a look that makes it obvious he’s waiting for an embarrassed reaction. Alexander turns his gaze to John too, expectant. John only grins and raises one shoulder in an unselfconscious shrug.

“Okay,” he admits, and his nose wrinkles up again in the way that Alexander has filed under ‘favorite things’, even though he’s only witnessed it a handful of times. “I knew your name already. I was trying to play it cool.”

Alexander feels something like smug delight ignite in his gut.

“No kidding,” he says, thoughtfully. “You know, you really make this not-kissing thing very difficult.”

Hercules makes a strangled noise. Lafayette blinks a few times, and then mumbles ‘not-kissing’ under his breath, as though searching for some second, hidden meaning. John spreads his hands, tips his head.

“It was your call, man. Anyway, are we getting out of here? I need a drink.”

They drive back to the city, piled into John’s car and singing along tunelessly to whatever comes up on the radio. The three of them bicker like children, teasing and laughing and slipping effortlessly into shared jokes and references. Alexander regards it all with a kind of awe, and then John loops him in, too, drags him into a joke and he’s so grateful for it that he thinks he might cry.

Then they’re spilling out of the car, John still cursing the city traffic. They carry the laughter with them, weaving their own little world out of it so that by the time they reach a bar—a little grimy and a little sticky, but thankfully within Alexander’s price range and not all that far from his own apartment—the city feels like a brand new place for him. Like he’s seeing it for the first time.

“So you two are not-kissing?” Lafayette finally bursts out, the second they’ve all squashed themselves into a booth with their drinks. John laughs out loud, and Alexander looks a little sheepish.

“How long have you been holding that in, Laf?” John asks. “You look physically pained.”

“I just do not _understand_ ,” Lafayette says, plaintively. “John has been pining after Alexander for many months now—”

“—hey, cool it with the ‘pining’,” John says, setting his beer back down hurriedly. He sends an apologetic glance Alexander’s way; Alexander can feel himself grinning, wolfish. “I just mentioned that I wouldn’t mind getting to know him.”

“Biblically,” Hercules deadpans as an aside, for Alexander’s benefit. Alexander snorts.

“—and now you finally get up the courage to talk to him, and you say you are not-kissing?” Lafayette continues, speaking loudly over the rest of them. He throws himself back against the booth, arms folded sullenly across his chest. “What does this even mean, John Laurens? What happened in that maze?”

“Ask him,” John says, flicking his fingers in Alexander’s direction. Alexander grimaces, and John curls his lips upwards, remorseless. Lafayette turns his anticipatory gaze on Alexander instead. Alexander steeples his fingers.

“Well, in its purest essence, it means that John Laurens and I are not kissing,” he intones. Someone kicks his shin under the table; he can’t tell who. He winces. “Ow, Jesus. Fine, I probably deserved that. I don’t have _nearly_ enough friends to ruin things by sleeping with one of them, okay? We came to an agreement. We’re better _a l’americaine_ than _a la françoise._ ”

“Dude,” Hercules says after a moment. “That’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard. When you say not nearly enough friends—how many we talking?”

“Including Burr and John?” Alexander asks. Hercules shrugs his assent. “Two.”

John looks genuinely distressed at the confession. Lafayette still just seems confused, arms folded and drink as-yet untouched. Alexander, who’s spent way too much time today confronting his own failings, resists the urge to slam his back in one.

“You’ve been at Columbia like, a year though?” Hercules says. “You must have met some other people.”

“Yeah,” Alexander agrees. “And then I slept with them. And so we come full circle back to the reason that I’m not kissing John.”

This whole situation is faintly absurd; John’s refusal to be embarrassed by any of it only makes it more so. He’s watching his friends work through Alexander’s logic with a lopsided smile, one elbow resting on the back of the booth.

“And you agreed to this?” Lafayette demands suddenly, turning to John.

“Sure,” John says amiably. “If I’m his friend, then he knows where to find me if he gets around to changing his mind.” Alexander doesn’t _quite_ choke on his drink when John winks at him, but he does end up having to surreptitiously wipe his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Hm,” Lafayette says doubtfully, and turns back to Alexander once more. “And _will_ you change your mind?”

Alexander flounders at that, trapped between the confession that he’s only about thirty seconds and one John-Laurens-nose-wrinkle away from changing his mind already, and a newfound determination to make a real friend that means he doesn’t want to make a promise he can’t keep.

“ _Il n’y a que les imbéciles qui ne changent pas d’avis_?” he offers, uncertainly. John’s lips twitch, and Lafayette looks a little mollified. Hercules rolls his eyes, and mutters something that sounds like ‘not another one’.

“Well,” Lafayette says graciously, finally taking hold of his drink. “If John wants to be your friend, then you may count two more among them, I suppose. We are like the Musketeers, you know? All for one.”

“Yeah?” Alexander asks, aiming for casual and missing the mark by a mile, practically tripping over the sudden warm glow that’s rising through his chest, clawing its way onto his face in the form of a goofy grin.

“Yeah, yeah,” Hercules says. “Let’s not get all sappy about it. Cheers.”

* * *

“You know this is a _terrible_ idea, right?” Hercules asks John after Alexander has left, citing an early morning shift. Lafayette insisted on keying all of their numbers into his phone before he left, two and a half drinks and an hour of conversation apparently erasing whatever reticence he’d still had about the whole, bizarre situation.

“I know nothing of the sort,” John says, and wriggles a little further into the space that Alexander’s absence has created, spreading out so that he’s more comfortable. The cracked leather of the seat is still warm.

“Someone’s gonna get hurt,” Hercules says, ominously. John flips him off.

“You heard him, we’re just friends.” Lafayette makes a sceptical noise.

“I heard _you_ ,” Hercules corrects, “implying that you’re gonna be waiting around for him to get a clue. What if he doesn’t get a clue, John? What if he remains utterly clueless? Don’t get me wrong, I like the kid, but he seems like a big bag of emotional issues taped together with academic prowess and caffeine.”

“Human disaster,” John muses, reminiscing on what Alexander had said to him. “Yeah, I know. Listen, I’m not gonna be cloistering myself to wait on Alexander Hamilton for the rest of my life, you know? I’m just saying, if he comes around to the idea—”

John shrugs.

“You should flirt less,” Lafayette says, decisively. “It seems as though he is not used to making friends _a l’americaine_ , as he says. You will only make it harder, I think.” John pauses at that, bottle halfway to his lips. He hadn’t really stopped to consider any of this from Alexander’s angle, really. He thinks about the way Alexander had looked so utterly thrilled when Lafayette had called them friends, the slight tightness that had settled around his eyes when he’d brushed by talking about the people he’d left behind.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “You probably have a point there. He’s just very—easy to flirt with.”

“Just be careful, Laurens,” Hercules says. And then, before he can be accused of caring, “—are you done? You’re like, two drinks behind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Il n’y a que les imbéciles qui ne changent pas d’avis.'  
>  _'Only fools never change their minds.'_
> 
> I love writing dialogue. Can you tell? Bet you can't tell.
> 
> The best Christmas gift is thoughtful feedback! Tell me what you like or don't like. Tell me how long you think it's gonna take Alexander to fuck this up.
> 
> Maybe another chapter before Christmas, but I have a bunch of family things so if not then in the New Year! In which case Merry Christmas (if you celebrate), I hope you all have a wonderful break.
> 
> [Come chat shit with me on tumblr!](https://seekstrivefind.tumblr.com/) I am literally always looking for new friends to chat to. I'm a very chatty person.
> 
> Hence, the dialogue.


	4. Chapter Three

The low murmur of conversation washes gently across the lecture hall, muted and patient. It’s still a few minutes before class starts, and John is doodling with idly focus in the margin of his notebook when a heavy bag lands on the table next to him. He startles, pen skittering across the page, cutting a harsh line through the vaguely bird-shaped collection of scribbles he’d been scratching into the paper.

“Sorry,” Alexander says cheerfully, and completely fails to look sorry at all. “Can I—?”

John gestures for him to go ahead, and Alexander grins as he drops into the seat next to John, just about as delicately as he’d dropped his bag. He looks tired, and there’s a worryingly large travel cup clutched tightly to his chest like he’s scared to let it go.

“All keyed up and ready to destroy Jefferson?” John asks, and Alexander groans. His gaze flicks around the room, searching for Jefferson. He hasn’t arrived yet; Alexander looks relieved.

“You could help me out with that, you know,” Alexander says reprovingly. “I know that you possess both the drive and the competence.” John shifts his head to one side, and idly returns to retracing the outline of his doodles, each repeated pass over the outline obscuring the original shape a little more until it’s nothing but a black, inky mess, indistinguishable from the other scribbles lining the paper.

“But my dear boy,” he drawls, sweetly. It’s half a mockery of Jefferson and half of himself; the South bleeding into his words until they drip with it. “You do it _so_ well.”

There’s a pause in the flurry of books and papers. Alexander peers at him, eyes squinting, suspicious. John might not be particularly connected with his heritage, by quite deliberate choice, but he hasn’t failed to notice that the curl of his accent seems to pique a spark of interest, more often than not. Call this an experiment, then. Alexander’s calculating gaze certainly seems to imply a certain level of intrigue.

“What,” Alexander asks evenly, “the _hell_ was that, John Laurens?”

“What was what?” John asks, tone innocent and smile just a little wicked, accent scraped from his words, vowels shortened back to the non-accent he affects on a daily basis. It’s the one he spent years driving into his tongue until it was second nature, until he couldn’t hear his own upbringing reflected in every word.

It’s one thing agreeing to flirt less with Alexander when he’s not _right there._ When he is, all bets are off, it seems; John feels a little guilty but just can’t help himself. Alexander stares at him and his sweet grin a moment longer before he drops it, going back to unpacking his things without elaborating further.

Alexander fusses around until everything in the space is arranged to his satisfaction—notebook, textbooks, pens and highlighters, sticky notes. John, who turns up to lecture with nothing but a battered legal pad and a leaking pen that he hasn’t thought to dispose of yet, looks on in amusement.

“You’ve been quiet,” John observes when Alexander seems more or less settled. “I mean—I know you’re busy, and all, but I haven’t seen much of you for a few weeks.” In truth, John’s a little relieved to have Alexander here, tangibly next to him and within reach. He’d been starting to feel like he’d imagined the whole thing, the maze and everything that followed.

“Ugh,” is Alexander’s eloquent answer. He runs his hand through his hair, gathering it at the back of his head with one hand as he scrabbles around in his bag with the other in search of a hair elastic. John rolls his own off his wrist and offers it up, pleased to be a part of the pre-class ritual he’s witnessed a dozen times before, surreptitiously watching Alexander before class begins.

Alexander can hold his hair up with a well-placed pen, he knows; he’s seen it done several times and silently admired the artistry of it, the way the strands fall from the makeshift bun as class goes and he grows more passionate in his debate, framing his face and slipping and scattering until the pen is merely tangled in loose hair, nothing at all.

Alexander flashes him a bright grin of thanks as he accepts the elastic, bundles his hair up.

“I am busy as hell. Also, I don’t know how to have friends,” Alexander reminds him. “Didn’t want to be too much, you know? You didn’t ask me anywhere. I didn’t want to be pushy.”

John snorts.

“You know you don’t need a formal invitation to hang out with us, right?”

“Noted. What do you guys even do when you hang out, anyway?”

“Whatever.” John shrugs and casts his mind back to the time he’s spent with Hercules and Lafayette recently. “Drink and talk shit. Watch movies and talk shit. Eat brunch and—”

“—talk shit?” Alexander finishes off with a laugh “I knew being friends with you would work out. Talking shit is like, the first special skill listed on my resume.”

“We should hang out after this, then,” John says. If Alexander isn’t going to hang out with them unless an invitation is extended is first, then he’s damn well going to extend the invitation. Long-standing crush aside, John’s actually excited to get to know Alexander—to put actual facts to the half-imagined image he’s been building inside his mind. “I’m grabbing coffee and talking shit with Mulligan.”

Alexander pulls out his phone, brings up his calendar and flicks through a couple of items. John leans in closer over his shoulder, peering in a sort of horrified fascination at the sheer volume of marked events, seemingly arranged in a complex colour-coding system.

“Uhh, looks like I should have a while before I gotta head to work, sure,” Alexander says. He catches sight of John watching and pulls up a new event.

1500-1630: DRINK COFFEE, TALK SHIT

John laughs, and pulls himself out of Alexander’ space as a sudden, subdued buzz indicates that their lecturer has arrived, and that class is about to begin.

“Better bring your A-game,” he murmurs. “Mulligan and I have had a _lot_ of practice.”

*

Hercules is already waiting in Starbucks when John and Alexander arrive. There’s two drinks sitting on the table in front of him, and Alexander can’t put his finger on why he’s so surprised that between the two of them, it’s Hercules who drinks the frothy, cream-covered abomination in a cup.

“Oh,” Hercules says, when he spots Alexander behind John. “Didn’t know you were coming.”

Hercules is up and already moving in the vague direction of the counter before Alexander can so much as say _hi._

“Hey, no worries,” Alexander says. “I’m the second-act surprise, as always. I got it, you don’t have to—”

Hercules turns a look on him that he’s not familiar with. John, by his amused snort, apparently is. It’s not intimidating, _per se_ , but it carries a certain, weighty patience that strongly implies that Hercules will win any upcoming argument, simply by outlasting it. Alexander stalls.

“—large americano, please,” he says, meekly. Hercules turns back to the counter, and Alexander leans close to hiss his next words into John’s ear. “You think he could teach me how to do that?”

“Not sure it would work on Jefferson, if that’s what you’re thinking,” John says thoughtfully. “He lacks the pre-requisite self-awareness.”

They settle, and soon enough Alexander has his fingers—always cold, no matter the weather, a martyr to his poor circulation—wrapped around an almost-too-hot cup. He inhales the aroma with a look of pure bliss on his face.

“You’re a god among men,” he tells Hercules, sincerely. “I’m working until like, eleven tonight. You may _literally_ have saved my life.”

“You ever _stop_ , Hamilton?” Hercules asks. John—the only one who’s ever really seen Alexander in action, so to speak—snorts.

“Not really,” Alexander admits. “Can’t afford to. Also: don’t want to. Too much shit to get done, you know? Time’s a-wasting.” Hercules tips his head in something that’s part doubt and part acquiescence, only tearing his gaze from Alexander to pluck his phone from the table when it buzzes harshly.

“Liza’s coming,” he tells John. “She want to bring Ange too, but apparently she’s got big tests coming and is in, quote, ‘a scary bad mood’.” John’s nose wrinkles in something that looks like disappointment. Alexander stares determinedly into his coffee to avoid having to address just how much he wants to lean over and kiss it.

“Aw,” John says. “I bet she and Ham would get on _great._ ”

Hercules casts a look towards Alexander and hums an ‘I guess’, like he’s not entirely convinced but he can’t be bothered to argue about it.

“Angelica can tear anyone into _pieces_ ,” John enthuses to Alexander, apparently undeterred by Hercules’ lack of enthusiasm. “She’s smart as hell. You two would probably have arguments the rest of us mere mortals couldn’t even understand. I’d take your side anyway, of course,” he adds generously, as an afterthought. Alexander grins at him over his coffee.

“Hell nah,” Hercules interjects. “You kidding? Your boy there might be smart, but Angelica could kill me in my sleep and leave no trace. I’m with her.”

Something twists in Alexander’s stomach at _your boy_ , an eagerness cut through with an uneasiness that he has no desire to unpack. He quashes the feeling and says ‘coward’ right at the same time that John does, both of them chorusing the insult in almost perfect synchronicity. Alexander flings a delighted look in John’s direction, and sees the same delight clutched tight between the smile that John’s wearing. Just behind him, Alexander catches a movement outside the window, somebody in a neat pink coat pausing just outside to fold up their umbrella.

He freezes, blood running cold.

“Oh, shit,” he says, faintly. John and Hercules fix him with questioning looks, John peppering a little light concern into his for good measure. Alexander slides down in his seat, doing his best to put Hercules’ bulk between himself and the door. His mind puts two and two together. He wishes it hadn’t

“So when you said ‘Liza’,” he says weakly, “I guess you meant—”

“Hey guys!” Her voice is warm and cheerful, just like he remembers it. She steps into view, hand dropping to squeeze Hercules’ shoulder in greeting, and then freezes there when she catches sight of Alexander, currently doing his best to become one with the armchair.

“Betsey,” he says, and swallows down bile. “Hi.”

The change in her demeanour is bad enough, but the sharpness in her tone when she replies is enough to drive him a little further down into the cushions, wary of the cut of her words but even more so of the flash of hurt and anger in her eyes. He’s never seen her angry before.

“I don’t think you get to call me that anymore,” she bites out. John looks from Eliza to Alexander and back again and then, because he’s a smart guy, connects the dots.

“Ohhh,” he says, drawing out the syllable, long and horrified. “Oh, _no._ ”

“Right, yep, probably not,” Alexander says, and paws frantically at his jacket, hurrying to jam his arms into the sleeves even as he stands. “I’ll just, um—”

He sidles towards the door, giving Eliza the widest possible berth, as though she might physically lash out at him at any second. John’s half up and out of his chair, looking torn, gaze darting between the two of them. Hercules is staring at John, wearing an expression that could not more clearly convey the sentiment _I told you so_. It stings more than it should.

And, hey—nice while it all lasted, right? Back to Friday nights hanging out in near-silence with Aaron, if Aaron will even deign to have Alexander back. Come to think of it, he hasn’t actually spoken to him since the whole maze thing, so the answer to that one is _probably not._ Typical, for Alexander to fuck all this up so badly that he’ll lose both his old friend and his new ones in one, fell swoop.

“He’s with you?” Eliza demands of both Hercules and John.

John says “yes” right as Alexander says “no”, desperately trying to prevent John and Hercules from getting dragged into his mess. Damage control is pretty much useless now, though, and he swallows hard as Eliza glares at him for a moment longer. Then, her anger seems to drop. The intensity of her gaze fades, and she instead looks a little tired and a little hurt, instead of angry.

It’s indisputably _worse._

“Oh, just—sit _down_ , Alexander,” she says, crossly. Alexander hesitates, and considers the door that’s a mere four steps behind him. It seems like a pretty good option, right now: cutting his losses and just making a run for it, before any of it can get any worse. Then he glances at John.

John’s brow is furrowed in concern, his clear eyes wide and focused on him with an almost desperate intensity. He shakes his head, the tiniest of movements, like he knows exactly what Alexander’s thinking.

There it is, the catch. He can walk away from this mess right now, run away from the fallout of his actions, and not have to deal with it. But if he does, he’s walking away from John, too.

He slinks back to his seat, and huddles close to John for protection. John’s arm twitches in a slight, abortive movement, like he wants to put his arm around Alexander, but then thinks better of it. Alexander feels smaller than ever.

Eliza arranges herself neatly in the chair next to Hercules, her spine ramrod straight, her pretty cheeks flushed a little and her dark eyes downcast.

“So,” Alexander says nervously after a silence that feels interminable but is probably closer to thirty seconds. “How have you been?”

“No,” she says, flatly.

“Fair,” Alexander agrees morosely. John leans in a fraction so that his words are tipped, warm, right into the shell of Alexander’s ear.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he whispers. “ _Never_ meet Angelica.”

Alexander thinks it might be meant as a joke; it only makes him feel worse. Eliza draws out the silence for another full minute. Hercules has his phone out, unsubtly texting, thumbs flying across the screen as he no doubt relates the whole disaster to someone. Alexander finds himself furiously hoping that it’s not Angelica; he’s got plans for the future that rely strongly on not being torn about by a vengeful Schuyler.

“Right,” Eliza says finally. “I hope you’ve got something to say for yourself.”

Alexander swallows, hard. He runs his tongue across his teeth, biting down on his first instinct to just _talk_ , to unleash the torrent of panicked words rising inside him. He looks at Eliza, at Hercules, at _John_ , and takes a moment to sift through them, to find what might be the right ones. The moment stretches on, all eyes on him.

 _Ah, fuck,_ he thinks. _Here goes nothing._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hands up who's getting their butt kicked by 2020 already? Yeah, me too.
> 
> Leave me your thoughts and questions and predictions, please! I crave that sweet, sweet engagement.
> 
> [Come chat shit with me on tumblr!](https://seekstrivefind.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter Four

There are a dozen things that Alexander ought to say, and several hundred things he should on no account voice. They all wrestle their way toward his tongue in an impossible tangle, a gordian knot tied tight with his poor choices and his burning regrets and his complete lack of moral responsibility.

“I’m sorry?” is all he manages. It comes out as a question, and Eliza’s pretty face darkens. Alexander holds his hands up in a placating gesture. “Okay, okay. I know. Go easy on me. I’ve never done this before.”

“Apologised?” Eliza asks, icily. Alexander chuckles nervously. Trails off when nobody else even quirks a smile.

“Would it sound better if I said ‘faced the emotional consequences of my actions?’ No, wow. Okay. Just heard it.” From his periphery, he can’t help but catch the wince that tugs John’s lips into a thin line. It’s all kinds of wrong to feel a stab of guilt and concern at that, overriding the acidic twinge of guilt sloshing about in his stomach at Eliza’s expression. He blows out a breath. “Alright—alright. Listen, I know that what I did—”

Eliza raises one arched brow. Heavy with the knowledge that she’s not going to let him off that easily, Alexander swallows hard against the knot that’s lodged itself at the back of his throat and runs a nervous hand through his hair. It had all sounded so simple, back when he’d told John. _The Venn diagram of people I kiss and people I’m friends with is just two entirely distinct circles._ A sanitised statement that entirely lacked anything like blame, or responsibility, or self-awareness.

Alexander has _never_ felt so aware of himself as in this moment.

He steels himself, and brushes the dust from his memories of Eliza—of her gentle smile and her dark eyes, the way her lips would purse slightly when she was disappointed, the way she’d tip her head when she agreed with something he was saying. He begins to talk, careful-slow, and navigates his words with only her face to guide him. She is somehow both the storm that seeks to wreck him, and the lighthouse that might bring him safely home.

“I betrayed your trust.” A tightening of her jaw, muscles flexing where her teeth grind together. Anger, agreement. “We were friends, and you deserved more than me walking away from that.” He thinks he’s on the right track until she leans back in her seat, chin tipped like she’s trying keep herself from leaping forward to slap him.

“Is that really what you think happened?” she demands. “That you walked away from our friendship and it upset me?”

“I mean—” Is it hot in here? He’s sweating, fingers tucked in tight against his clammy palms to keep them from trembling. “No, I know that it was more than that, I’m just—”

She folds her arms over her chest. She waits. There’s patience in that posture, but it’s strained; she’s waiting to hear what it is that she wants him to say, but she won’t wait forever. Miserable, steeped in self-loathing like never before, he feels himself hunch down a little, spine bending under the weight of what he has to confess.

“It was unfair,” he says, quietly. “For me to lead you on, let you think that there was ever the chance of something romantic between us. I swear, Eliza, I didn’t—I wasn’t just trying to get you into bed, you know?”

“Well, you did,” she says, flatly. Something brushes against Alexander’s arm and he realises with a start that it’s John; John, whose expression has no right to be as soft and concerned as it is, right now. Not when he’s looking at Alexander instead of Eliza. Alexander closes his eyes, because it feels easier than having to look at anyone and see the way they’re looking back at him, and anyway, it helps to quell the rising nausea in his gut.

“I didn’t _mean_ to disappear,” he says, and he hates how weak his own voice sounds. How pathetic.

“Could have fooled me,” Eliza says. “You weren’t there when I woke up. And I thought—god, I was an idiot—I thought you’d gone to get breakfast, or coffee. Then when you didn’t come back, I thought maybe you got called into work. Then, when you _still_ didn’t come back, I worried that something had happened to you, Alexander.”

That twists at his insides. He’d never considered that she might have been distressed on his behalf.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he says, and the sincerity in his voice causes her to pause, at least. She has a right to hear that he’d known that he would, the second he’d leaned close and kissed her—that he simply didn’t possess the restraint to _care_ in that moment, not with her pressed warm and wonderful against him. He’s too ashamed to say it. “You deserved more than that. God, you deserved _so_ much more than that, and I know I was cruel and careless and that it hurt you. I’m sorry. I really am.”

He trails off lamely, hating himself and what he’s done, what he can’t find the words to say. Hating that Hercules and John are here to see his shame. For a moment, he thinks that her expression has softened, lost a fraction of its sharpness. It’s still nowhere near the smooth kindness that he remembers.

“He knows he fucked up,” John says, startling Alexander and Eliza alike. She seems to have forgotten that anybody else is present; a flush stains her cheeks as she glances first to John and then to Hercules. John bulldozes onwards, even though this is definitely not his fight. Even if it were, he’s known Eliza far longer than he’s known Alexander, and this is not the side he ought to be taking. “He’s working on it.”

It’s not exactly an impassioned defence, but it’s more than he deserves by far. Alexander stares at him in faint surprise. John doesn’t elaborate, and Eliza doesn’t ask for clarification. For a long moment they simply look at each other. Hercules is watching furtively, thumbs hovering over his phone screen.

“Let me get you a coffee,” Alexander says, wearily. “I mean—I’m not trying to buy your forgiveness with caffeine. That would be stupid. It’d probably work for me though, hah. I just mean you don’t have a drink and you should probably have one. If you want. And I’d like to buy it.”

He half expects her to refuse, but she’s always been a bigger person than him. She inclines her head, a jerky movement that only serves to emphasise just how stiffly she’s holding herself. His small smile is tired, contrite. He slinks away to the counter, finds that he can still give her order without really stopping to think about it.

While he waits for the drink, he mentally readjusts his weekly budget to account for the expensive mess of cream and coffee and syrup. Turning back to peek at Eliza, he sees her and John and Hercules all talking, heads close and expressions serious. Deciding his fate.

He grips the counter, white-knuckled, staring down at it intently until his order is called. He takes it slowly, tries to remember how to breathe, and makes his way back over to the group of armchairs.

Eliza accepts the drink with good grace. John’s eyes flicker to the cup and then back up to Alexander, and Alexander could wish that he was perhaps a little less observant, suddenly conscious that his easy remembrance of Eliza’s habits is only proof of the depth of his betrayal. Bad enough if he’d ghosted her after some tinder hook-up. Far worse that they had been friends beforehand, that Alexander had knowingly flirted with her, kissed her, led her to bed and left her behind.

“You’re on thin ice, Alexander,” Eliza tells him before she takes a sip of her coffee.

“I know,” Alexander sighs. There’s an air of the defeated about him.

“But thank you,” she says softly. “For the coffee, and for the… apology.”

Hot relief floods him at the realisation that she’s giving him a chance, or at least the promise of one. For now, he gets to stay friends with John and Hercules and Lafayette—if they still want him, of course. Maybe one day, he’ll even get to be friends with Eliza again. They’d been good friends, close, had always fitted well together—right up until he’d fucked it all up by being incapable of keeping it in his damn pants.

“Yeah. No problem,” he says, more casually than he feels. “Listen, I’ve got to head to work, but I’ll…?” He falters, makes an abortive half-gesture towards John and Hercules. Hercules grunts.

“Catch you later,” John says, reassuringly. Alexander shoots him a smile, pathetically grateful.

“Later,” Hercules agrees. Alexander can’t read his tone. Eliza only offers him a nod, but she lifts the cup again and takes another sip of the coffee through the mountain of cream on top, and maybe that’s enough for now.

He’s still wearing his jacket; he slinks out of the Starbucks without finishing his coffee, regretting the mostly-full cup that’s still sitting on the table but not wanting to push his luck by hanging around for long enough to get it to-go.

The wind is biting, bringing with it an icy rain that stings against his skin. Digging his fingers into his pockets, he hunches his shoulders up and wishes he’d had the foresight to bring an umbrella. Setting himself against the rain, head ducked, he walks fast. He’s going to be early for his shift, but it’s better than lingering in the cold and wet.

This whole thing seems like a kick in the teeth from the universe. He’d been feeling _good_ about the whole John thing—about _not_ acting impulsively for maybe the first time in his goddam life. It’s not easy, sitting next to John and feeling the warmth radiate off him, watching him wrinkle his nose and shift his freckles about his face, leaving Alexander’s breath catching on the warm feeling that blooms through his chest when he manages to make John laugh. He wants nothing more than to sink his fingers into the mess of curls that John keeps scrunched up in his ponytail, to pull himself close against the hard line of his body and lick into his mouth. But he’s resisting, he’s _trying,_ and the universe has rewarded him with a big old karmic slap to the face. A reminder that, try all he likes, he leaves people scattered in his wake.

 _Like a hurricane_ , he thinks bitterly, and shivers against the cold water beading on his eyelashes, gathering on his skin.

So maybe it’s a trade-off. Maybe if he can prove that he can win Eliza’s forgiveness—or even her friendship, though that seems far-off and unlikely—the universe will cut him a break. Soften the hard knot of want in his chest and let him mellow out, keep his new friends without having to taste the constant desire to sabotage himself.

He reaches work, and greets his boss with only an absent nod as he ducks through the store and into the crowded little back office, not much more than a desk and some shelving wedged into a cupboard, each one overflowing with thick binders and loose paperwork. He hangs his coat on the back of the door, and grabs a pile almost at random, diving right back into the mindless task of sorting and filing and digitising. His thoughts are elsewhere. Twice, he realises he’s been misfiling purchase orders, and has to work backwards to rectify his mistakes.

The last piece of paper is scanned and filed. He sits for a long moment, fingers tapping idly against the desk before he reaches for another messy pile, and then hesitates when his eyes catch on the gently humming computer perched in the corner of the desk, a dinosaur with a dusty mechanical keyboard that’s barely used.

He pulls the keyboard towards him, tapping the space bar a few times to wake the ancient beast from its slumber. It comes to life reluctantly, whirring and groaning. He opens up a blank document and stares pensively at the cursor blinking back at him.

He rolls his neck one way, then the other. He cracks the knuckle of one thumb idly. He begins to write.

* * *

“It was pretty much the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed,” Hercules says from where he’s lying, sprawled across Lafayette’s couch and leaving no room for anybody else. John can only wince in sympathy. Even hours later, it’s all he can think about. Eliza is perhaps the gentlest of her sisters, and John’s never really seen her angry before, not like that. Suddenly, Angelica’s brazen, spitfire rage doesn’t seem so scary in the face of what Eliza’s expression had promised.

“Alexander was also upset?” Lafayette asks.

“Yeah, they both were,” John confirms. “He looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him whole.”

“Didn’t seem all that upset to me,” Hercules says. John feels a flash of irritation towards Hercules, who seems to have made it his mission to doubt Alexander Hamilton at every given opportunity since he first wandered into their lives. John scowls.

“He was _shaking_ ,” John says. “And I’ve never seen him lost for words before.”

“Laurens, you don’t actually _know_ the guy that well—”

“—I know him well enough,” John snaps. He doesn’t say _I’ve watched him,_ because that sounds creepy and his friends have ripped him enough shit for that, lately. But it’s true; Alexander puts himself on show for the whole world to judge. _Dares_ it to do so. John feels like he’s seen enough to understand.

They might have only known each other a few weeks, but John feels like he’s known him forever. Alexander manages to _get_ him, in ways that even Lafayette and Hercules don’t always seem to—and they’ve had years to figure him out.

“I am sorry for both of them,” Lafayette says, clearly trying to keep what fragile peace there is in the room. “But I hope that Alexander does mean what he says about earning Eliza’s forgiveness.” It’s a genuine hope that carries a note of warning in it; Lafayette is fiercely protective of his friends. John drags a hand down his faces, and searches for a way to change the subject.

He’s saved by his phone ringing, the screen darkening for a second before it lights up with Alexander’s name. He hurriedly snatches it from the table, swipes to accept the call, and moves through towards Lafayette’s bedroom, far enough that he can at least pretend not to notice Hercules watching keenly, suspiciously.

“Hey man,” he says. “You okay?”

“What? Oh, yeah. Fine.” Alexander sounds distracted, like listening is one task too many for his brain to deal with, right now. “Listen, John, you’d tell me if something was a stupid idea, right?”

It’s an inauspicious start to a conversation. John takes a second to be mildly amused that anyone might use _him_ as a moral anchor like that. He’s always been reckless and impatient and has favoured direct action. Usually his friends are the ones to hold _him_ back. Still.

“I’d tell you. I’m scared to ask, though. You’re not about to ritualistically fall on your own sword in a misguided attempt to placate Eliza, are you?” John catches a faint sound at Eliza’s name, just the slightest intake of breath. He waits for a denial, but it doesn’t come. He frowns. “Hamilton, have I mentioned that—possibly against my better judgment—I’m very fond of you and would prefer if you remained in one piece?”

Alexander laughs, a breathy burst of static across the line like he’s released a breath he couldn’t stand any longer.

“I wrote something,” he says.

“Okay.”

“Can I send it to you? I need another pair of eyes before I put it out there.”

“Sure?” John glances back over his shoulder. Hercules is watching him, and Lafayette is pretending not to, staring down at a magazine with his head tipped to one side so that he can hear more clearly. John’s not entirely sure what Alexander means by ‘out there’. He knows that he’s written pieces for various school journals and magazines before, contributed to various blogs and newspaper columns. With no further explanation forthcoming, he resigns himself to the mystery. “Send it to my school email. I’ll pick it up now.”

“Thanks, John.”

Alexander hangs up without saying goodbye. John stares at the phone for a moment, and then wanders back towards the couch, pulling his emails up as he does. His ire still a little pricked by Hercules’ behaviour, he ignores the expectant expressions of his friend and simply shoves his legs to one side, settling into the corner of the couch to wait for the email. It arrives within moments, and he opens it immediately.

His phone freezes up for a second when he opens the attachment. It’s _long_ , pages and pages, and his brows rise in surprise. They only rise further when he reads the first paragraph. He blinks, moves on to the next one.

“Oh, shit,” he says, eventually.

“That’s starting to sound like your catchphrase where Hamilton is involved,” Hercules mutters. John glances at him before swallowing hard, pushing his own childish irritation to one side.

“Listen to this,” he says, scrolls back to the top, and starts reading out loud.

* * *

Alexander answers his phone on the first ring, fumbling hurriedly for it.

“You _cannot_ publish this,” John says by way of greeting. “Anywhere.”

Alexander exhales. Pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, he tries to pretend that the trembling in his hands is from caffeine withdrawal.

“I thought it would help.”

“Alexander, this isn’t just ritualistically falling on your own sword. It’s pulling Eliza down with you. It’s murder-suicide in an essay.” John’s tone is urgent. Alexander shakes his head. It had seemed so clear and simple when he’d started writing. He’d had a plan, a way to make a difference. He’d do what he’d done so many times before and weave his words into a platform that would give him the leg up he needed to climb out of the hole he’d dug for himself.

He’d only asked John to read it because it seemed sensible, like something that someone who was trying to get their life together might do.

“But it’s about _me_ ,” he objects. “It’s about how shitty _I_ was. I want her to know that I’m actually sorry, that I’m taking responsibility for what I did—”

“Then tell _her_. Don’t tell the world! You think she wants everyone to read how you broke her heart? That’s… that’s a private kind of hurt. Not the kind you share. Anyway, I doubt that Eliza would consider your ritual humiliation a useful thing, you know?”

Alexander lets himself fall back onto his narrow bed, feeling the tangle of sheets bunched uncomfortably beneath him where he’d failed to make the bed this morning. He lies there, too frustrated to move, and stares at his ceiling. _Broke her heart._ It’s an ugly thing to hear. It’s an ugly thing to have done. John ought to hate him for it.

“Then what do I do?” he asks. “I hate—god, I hate not knowing what to do.”

“Listen, a lot of what you’ve written… it’s good.” For the first time, John sounds a little uncomfortable. A touch uncertain. “It’s stuff that she should probably hear from you. Just—not like this. Maybe tone it down a bit. Make it into a real letter, not an essay. Then send it to Eliza. _Just_ Eliza.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty beautiful in parts, actually. Lafayette cried.” Alexander hears Lafayette’s cry of objection in the background. Rapid-fire French that he can only half make out sounds like a list of all the ways in which John is a liar, along with some anatomically improbably advice on how to pass his time.

“Mulligan and Lafayette read it too?” Alexander asks, and tries to parse how he feels about that.

“I read it to them,” John corrects him. A pause, and then, “I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah.” Alexander’s caught up on the idea of John reading out the words he’d poured so much of his soul into. John and his low, smooth voice, the way his vowels uncurl into something looser when he’s passionate about something, when he’s not thinking. Alexander swallows, and presses his fingers to his cheek, feeling the warmth there. “Yeah, it’s fine. I mean, I was gonna let the whole internet read it, so.”

“Right,” John laughs. Then there’s an exchange of words, muffled like he’s pressed the phone against his chest. A rustle, and then his voice reappears. “Uh, Hercules wants the phone. Hang on.” Alexander chews his lip as the phone is passed over. He’s painfully aware that while John—miraculously, inadvisably, and almost definitely incorrectly—doesn’t seem to have changed his mind about being Alexander’s friend, Hercules has been a little more reserved about him all along.

“Hamilton,” Hercules says, in a measured voice.

“Hi.” Alexander can hear footsteps, something that might be a door closing.

“It was shitty that you hurt Eliza like that. She’s our friend.”

“I know,” Alexander says. What else is there to say that Hercules hasn’t already heard, second-hand from John’s mouth?

“But you’re alright,” Hercules says. Alexander doesn’t answer for a long moment, honestly surprised by the declaration. He stares blankly at his messy desk, even more covered in paper than the one he’d come from at work. No one pays him to keep _this_ filing system neat, though there’s a certain pattern to the piles that he and he alone can read. He realises his fingers are still pressed to his cheek, and drops them as Hercules continues. “What you were prepared to do—”

“—John said it was dumb,” Alexander reminds him. Hercules chuckles at the interruption.

“It _was_ dumb. But in like, a noble way. Enough to convince me that you are actually sorry about it, and that you might be a pretty okay guy somewhere underneath all your shitty decisions.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Alexander says, aiming for levity. He’s rewarded with another low laugh from Hercules that reverberates through the phone’s tinny speaker and knocks Alexander’s relief loose.

“It’s the nicest thing I ever will,” Hercules shoots back. “But listen, Hamilton: if Eliza decides to forgive you it’s on her terms. You better work damn hard to earn it, but you better not push her. If you give up on this ‘cause it’s too hard, or fuck up again, or whatever, I might just change my mind about you.”

“I won’t. I promise.” Alexander wonders who he’s actually making the promise to—Hercules, or himself, or Eliza. “For the record, I am notoriously stubborn. Giving up isn’t really my thing. Get John to record me in class sometime.”

“No one wants to listen to you arguing about law,” Hercules says. “Except John.”

Alexander laughs, a little more easily this time though there’s the faintest note of relief-softened panic to the sound. He’s still shaking. He wants a coffee, he wants a drink, he wants everything to be simple. He wants this moment to last forever, for some reason, the moment where John keeps him from ruining everything and Hercules threatens him and Lafayette continues to unconvincingly deny that he’s an absolute sap.

“Yeah, well,” Alexander says. “He’s got pretty great taste, so.”

“That’s another thing,” Hercules says, and Alexander feels himself freeze up all over again. “John is my _boy_. He’s basically family, you hear? You got him all tied up in knots, pining and shit. I know he says he isn’t, but I know that kid.”

Alexander licks dry lips. “I don’t want to hurt him the way I hurt Eliza,” he explains hoarsely. “That’s all. I—fuck, Hercules, I’ve known him like three weeks and he’s already the closest friend I ever had.”

“You keep saying these things,” Hercules says tiredly. “These really _sad_ things.”

“I’m pitiable, I know.”

“Like a kicked puppy. I’m glad you’re trying to be mature about it, or whatever. But don’t string the boy along forever. He deserves better than sitting around waiting for you.”

 _I didn’t ask him to wait_ , Alexander wants to say, _I just asked him to be my friend._ But it doesn’t feel like the right thing. Feels mean. He stays silent, unwilling to tarnish what little good standing he’s earned with Hercules.

“You hurt Eliza, and I’ll set Angelica and Peggy on you,” Hercules continues. “But you hurt John Laurens, and I swear to god I’ll be the one to make your life a hell you can’t possibly begin to imagine. We clear?”

“John know you’re out here defending his honour?” Alexander jokes, weakly, and almost immediately regrets it when Hercules doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even huff a breath of amusement.

“I said, we clear?”

“Yes,” Alexander agrees, soberly. “We’re clear.”

“Good.” Hercules’ tones shifts, from stern to casual, not a trace of the sincere threat that had been there a moment earlier. It’s enough to give Alexander whiplash. “You coming over? We’re ordering pizza.”

Alexander looks at his desk again, the orderly chaos of the paper, the screen of his laptop, dark and accusatory.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’ll be there in twenty.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alexander Hamilton is an idiot: more at 11.
> 
> This chapter heavily inspired by the cut lyrics 'or you could let it go/the friend who would tell me not to do it is in the ground'. John Laurens saving the day 2k20.
> 
> I know that this chapter was light on the John/Alexander. I could have moved onto the upcoming pining, but this felt like a neat division to make before this chapter ended up being 10,000 words on its own.
> 
> Please leave your thoughts, comments, requests, expectations, star sign, idle thoughts, or any other sundry words you'd like to. Your comments are what keep me going writing this :)


	6. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised we'd get onto the actual pining, and boy, is there a lot of it in this chapter. Consider yourself warned for boys being absolute idiots.

The concept of _removing_ words from a finished piece is somewhat alien to Alexander. He sits there, fingers hovering over the backspace key, never quite able to condemn any part as unnecessary. He removes a few errant words, debates on his over-dependence on semicolons, and accidentally adds another qualifying paragraph before he admits defeat.

“Conciseness isn’t exactly my vibe,” he grumbles to John the next day, when they tuck themselves into a corner of the library after a lecture.

“You don’t say,” remarks John, who hadn’t been shy in telling Alexander that he’d literally had to take a break in the middle of proofreading the last essay he’d sent over in order to have a snack and rehydrate. Alexander glares at his laptop like it’s personally betrayed him, chewing on his lip and making no move to actually work on the problem. 

John sighs and pushes the lid of Alexander’s laptop closed.

“Alright,” he says. “What’s the most important thing you want to say to her?”

“...Sorry?” Alexander hazards, watching John's face for his reaction. John only huffs a breath of laughter.

“Not a test, dude.”

“Right, right,” Alexander agrees, hurriedly. He drums his fingers on the table. There’s a lot he wants to tell Eliza, and ranking it seems like an insurmountable task. That he’s sorry _should_ be the top thing, right? Or is the explanation more important than the apology? The last thing he wants to do is make it all about him—except it kind of _is_ all about him, because Eliza is an angel and probably hasn’t ever done anything wrong in her life. He blinks when John snaps his fingers in front of his face. “What?”

“I _said_ , you’re overthinking it,” John says, and—yeah, okay, easy enough for _him_ to say. “Imagine this: you’ve only got one minute to talk to her. What do you say?” Alexander blinks.

“One minute? Christ.” He blows out a breath. “I mean, that depends on the context, right? Is she cutting me off after a minute because she’s already decided she doesn’t want to hear it, because that seems—”

“Alexander.” John takes Alexander’s face in his hands and leans close, and that’s more than enough to startle Alexander into silence, thank you very much. He valiantly manages to resist looking down at John’s lips. “One minute. Go.”

John’s tone is commanding, and the whole world has narrowed down to just his sleepy eyes and the warmth of his palms against Alexander’s skin.

“I’d tell her that I’m sorry. That when my father left I learned not to trust closeness or emotional intimacy, but that when my mom died I learned to crave it anyway. That my cousin hammered home the cost of it. That I’ve always dealt with all of that by not sticking around, and that until now I hadn’t really thought about it being detrimental to anyone but myself. And that none of that excuses the fact that I betrayed her trust and ruined our friendship. And I’d say—”

Alexander falters, tongue darting out to dry lips. John’s gaze flickers down towards it, and Alexander feels something wind a little too tight in his chest.

“What?” John says, the soft word seeming to gather in the place where his fingertips rest against Alexander’s cheeks, burning in against his already too-hot skin.

“The thought of hurting you like that makes me feel terrible,” Alexander says, and tries to pretend that it doesn’t sound like a confession, tipped into the space between them with the pretence of Eliza a spectre at his side. “I never want to be the person to do that.”

There’s a long moment of silence, and then John smiles.

“Again,” he says.

“What?” Alexander says, dumbly, broken from a reverie he doesn’t quite remember slipping into.

“You don’t want to be the person to do that to her _again_ ,” John says, and there’s a note of apology to his tone.

“Right,” Alexander agrees, feeling mildly nauseous. John grimaces and drops his hands. Alexander’s skin feels cold where they were resting. 

“Sorry. That made me sound like a dick. I just meant—this is important, you don’t want to understate it. You did, er—you did hurt her pretty badly.” He reaches up to scratch awkwardly at his neck. His hair is up, the way he often wears it to lectures, and there’s one curl falling loose at the nape of his neck.

“No, no,” Alexander says hurriedly. “You’re totally right.”

“That’s it, though,” John points out. “Everything you need to tell her. In, what, thirty seconds? Ditch the novel. Just write that stuff down.”

“Huh,” Alexander says, after a thoughtful pause. And then, brows furrowed in concentration as he tries to remember exactly what he’d said, he opens up his laptop, and begins to write—aware of John next to him the whole time, quiet but undeniably present.

* * *

John reads through two drafts, Lafayette and Hercules a third. Eventually, Alexander’s forced to admit that there’s nothing left to do but send it.

“Which email address is she on these days?” he asks. Lafayette sputters an indignant noise.

“An email?” he demands. “You cannot possibly—an _email!_ This is a heartfelt apology, Alexander, not some soulless marketing stunt. You want this to end up in amongst coupons for a product she viewed once in 2014, newsletters she doesn’t remember signing up to, and suspicious foreign nationals offering her the chance to claim a million dollars?”

“...your inbox sounds like a nightmare,” John observes after a brief, measured silence. “You know there’s a junk folder, right?”

“Unsubscribe buttons are your friend, man,” Hercules agrees, and then turns to Alexander. “He’s right, though. Letter seems more sincere.”

It takes him almost forty minutes to transcribe the whole thing out. The effort of keeping his writing legible leaves his hand painfully cramped when he’s finally done.

“It will be worth the effort,” Lafayette says confidently as he carefully folds the paper into an envelope and seals it. Alexander grimaces, digging his thumb into the meat of his palm in an attempt to alleviate the dull ache.

And then, abruptly, he can only wait.

It’s the worst. He’s tense with no outlet—can’t sleep, can’t relax, can’t _stop._ All the nervous energy builds and builds until his bones are saturated with it and his muscles are nothing but knots of gnawing anxiety coiled beneath his skin. He regrets letting his friends convince him to send a letter, because he doesn’t know what to wait for in return. A text, a call, an email? It hardly seems likely that she’ll write back, but he’s set a precedent now. Is this going to end up some eighteenth-century bullshit, conducting a conversation with days and days between each reply?

With each day that passes without some acknowledgment, some response, he grows wilder.

“What if it never got delivered?” he demands of John as they buy sad-looking sandwiches from the cafeteria after a particularly dull lecture. “What if the address was wrong? Or, like, the postman dropped it? I should email it too, just to make sure, right?”

“Oh my god,” John says, plucking the sandwich from Alexander’s hand to slap it down on the counter, thrusting a few crumpled bills at the cashier and then steering Alexander towards a table. “Will you calm down? It got there, okay?”

“Why?” Alexander asks frantically. “What have you heard? Did she say something?”

John rolls his eyes, unwraps his sandwich, and takes a huge bite. Pointing at his full mouth, he shrugs. Alexander scowls and peels the plastic wrap from his own sandwich with a mutinous precision.

“Give it time,” John says, around a mouthful of bacon, lettuce and tomato. “It’s a lot for her to think about.”

Inactivity feels like a punishment. In an act of understanding and mercy that Alexander doesn’t deserve, John syncs their calendars. Every time there’s a gap in Alexander’s schedule, he turns up. He keeps him company in the hour between one shift and the next, brings him coffee before class, and appears in the library when he’s working like Alexander has summoned him with a mere thought. Sometimes, they talk and laugh and Alexander lets himself be distracted. Other times, John just sits there in silence and lets him write or read—but he’s _there_ , close enough to reach out and touch.

(Alexander doesn’t reach out, doesn’t touch, no matter how much he wants to; Hercules’ words still ring in his ears. _He deserves better than sitting around waiting for you_.)

On Alexander’s infrequent free evenings, John appears at his door and refuses to let him stew in his own company. He drags him out to bars, with or without some combination of Lafayette and Hercules in the mix. He settles onto Alexander’s too-small couch and watches netflix with him. He brings takeout, or beer, or both.

For weeks, it’s only John that keeps Alexander from going entirely mad.

On this particular evening—a Tuesday, possibly the longest Tuesday he’s ever had the misfortune to experience—John picks up him up and drives them both across town to Lafayette’s place.

“Alexander!” Lafayette exclaims when he answers the door. He’s always effusive, affectionate; Alexander gives himself up for a tight, long-armed embrace, and dutifully returns the cheek-kisses, secretly relishing in the affection of it all. John snickers behind him, childishly, until Alexander is relinquished and John pulled in for the same, letting out a surprised _oof!_

“You literally saw me half an hour ago,” John complains, muffled, from Lafayette’s chest.

“Yes, well,” Lafayette says gravely. “I do not want to be seen playing favourites.” And then, he checks his watch and retreats behind the kitchen island, and fixes Alexander with a look that, on balance, is probably somewhere between pride and wariness.

“—what?” Alexander demands, suddenly suspicious.

“I have done something,” Lafayette says, vague and just a little ominous, “for which I hope you will not be angry at me.”

Alexander feels non-specific panic simmer up in his gut. A quick glance at John is enough to figure out that whatever’s going on, he wasn’t in on it; he’s got a look of mild confusion on his face, and he’s taken half a step closer to Alexander, apparently without even thinking about it. He opens his mouth, but before he can frame his question, there’s a knock at the door.

As one, they turn to stare at it. Nobody moves; the knock comes again, a little bolder this time. Lafayette flaps his hands towards Alexander.

“Answer it,” he says, in a whisper.

Alexander knows, with a sort of prophetic certainty, what he’ll find when he opens the door. He’s not sure whether to be scared or relieved—whether to feel grateful or betrayed. He takes one last look at John before he approaches the door, cautious, and opens it.

Eliza blinks up at him, her cheeks bitten pink from the cold outside and her gloves clutched in one hand. Surprise widens her dark eyes, parts her pretty lips, and for half a moment Alexander remembers when they’d been a distraction to him, a constant siren-song that in the end, he couldn’t resist. That song has long faded now, leaving only the soft and nostalgic refrains of the friendship they’d once shared.

“Hi,” he says, and endeavours to make the single syllable sound apologetic.

“Hi,” she replies. There’s an awkward moment of silence.

“Hi ‘Liza,” John says loudly from behind Alexander. “Nice to see you.”

Belatedly, Alexander realises that he’s still standing in the doorway. Clearing his throat, he hurriedly withdraws to let her in, pushes the door closed behind her. Lafayette fusses over her, taking her coat and hugging some warmth back into her, pressing the same kisses to her cheeks as he had Alexander and John.

“I will put your coat, ah… somewhere safe,” Lafayette says, entirely unconvincingly, and further makes a mockery of his lie by tugging John along the corridor after him. Alexander and Eliza stare at each other.

“I didn’t know he was planning this,” Alexander says.

“Me neither,” Eliza agrees. Is that a smile quirking the corner of her lips? Alexander thinks it might be.

“He’s very invested,” Alexander explains.

“He’s sweet,” Eliza says. 

“But not subtle.”

“No,” Eliza laughs. “He’s not that.”

They stand for a long moment. Alexander wonders if the ‘safe place’ that Lafayette is finding for Eliza’s coat is the bedroom, door closed, or whether it’s just around the corner with a keen ear listening to every word being exchanged. He suspects the latter more than the former.

“Thank you for not running away when I answered the door,” he says, and means _thank you for this chance you’re giving me._ He can’t quite interpret the soft look that she fixes on him, not quite pity and not quite forgiveness. He tugs nervously at his hair. 

“—and now that is taken care of,” Lafayette says, with exaggerated exuberance as he strides back towards them from around the corner. John trails after him, rolls his eyes at Lafayette when Alexander catches them. “Who would like a drink?”

They go through the motions, the four of them, John and Lafayette lending a semblance of normalcy to the whole affair. They talk about the weather and their work, they talk about Thanksgiving plans, they talk about how tired they are. Nobody mentions the letter, though its presence looms heavily above them at all times. Time and time again, Alexander’s gaze is drawn back to Eliza—to her gentle smile, to the familiar way that she tucks her hair behind her ear when she talks passionately about something. He aches a little, at having missed it all.

Once, he glances over and catches John watching him watch Eliza as she enthusiastically relates the details of a cocktail bar she and her sisters had found that served cocktails in fine china teacups. John winks. Not entirely sure what he’s trying to convey, Alexander winks back. John grins.

At some point, John heaves himself off the couch and goes rooting through Lafayette’s cupboards. Lafayette tuts loudly at him.

“I’m hungry,” John says, without turning around. “Do you have any real food, or do you actually subsist on ‘organic rye and pumpkin seed crackers’?”

“Nothing that your barbarous palate would appreciate,” Lafayette sniffs. “We can order something in.”

“I actually already have dinner plans,” Eliza says, apologetically. When she stands, Alexander does too, shooting to his feet and then feeling stupid for having done it. Lafayette also stumbles to his feet, apparently feeling left out.

“Well, I am glad you came,” Lafayette says, generously.

“So am I,” she says, and very deliberately doesn’t look at Alexander when she says it. Lafayette fetches her coat from wherever he’d stashed it earlier in the evening. She hugs him goodbye, and then John, and then she stands in front of Alexander for a long and uncomfortable moment. He sticks his hands in his pockets just for something to do with them, which is why when she steps forwards to briefly clasp her arms around him, he can only stand there awkwardly.

“We’ll talk,” she murmurs at his ear before she pulls back, and there’s a thrill in Alexander that might be relief or excitement or fear, or any raw and visceral combination of the three.

“Are you angry?” Lafayette asks meekly when she’s gone.

“I’m not angry,” Alexander promises. Now that Eliza’s gone, he can feel a cresting wave of what might be hope rising in him.

“But are you _hungry_?” John insists, unable to focus on the minutiae of the ongoing saga of the fallout of Alexander’s mistakes so long as his stomach is making demands of him. Alexander laughs, a little giddy.

“Sure,” he says. “I could be hungry.”

They order Thai food, and drink way too much wine. Alexander tucks himself close to John without even realising, and feels himself aching with a brutal happiness that seems to be bruising him from the inside out.

Somewhere between the end of the second bottle and middle of the third, Lafayette falls asleep on the couch. It’s peaceful, the way that Alexander and John tuck their quiet conversation around him—or at least, it is right up until Alexander is interrupted by a loud snore that tears through the quiet. He stares at Lafayette in surprise, and waits. There’s a snuffling breath out, and then another loud snore echoes through the room.

He looks at John, wide-eyed, and John looks back, and then they’re laughing—pressing their hands over their mouths ineffectually in an attempt to keep from waking their snoring host. They hush each other frantically, drunkenly, and John takes Alexander’s hand and pulls him up from the couch, leads him through to a room too minimally furnished to be Lafayette’s. Alexander supposes it’s a guest room. They tumble onto the bed with a complete lack of grace, both on their backs next to each other, legs dangling off the edge of the bed.

“Does he always snore?” Alexander wonders out loud. “He’s so like, elegant, or whatever. And then—”

John mimics Lafayette’s rumbling snore, and they’re laughing all over again.

“Only when he’s been drinking, I think,” John answers when he finally catches his breath, one eye scrunched up as he tries to recall. “Dunno.”

“It’s cute,” Alexander says, decisively.

“ _You’re_ cute,” John corrects in a sing-song voice. Alexander lets his arm flop out to smack John in the chest, his hand lingering a second too long before he pulls it back again. It’s not his fault; the wine has made it just that much harder to remember that he’s made a deal with the universe, and he’s still got his end of the bargain to uphold.

“I prefer sexy,” Alexander says, deadpan. “I’ll also settle for ‘devilishly charming’ or ‘the perfect picture of masculine beauty’.” John’s rolls his head to the side so that he’s facing Alexander, stretching out the column of his neck in an agonisingly elegant line. Alexander’s eyes betray him, travelling the forbidden sweep down to the freckled hollow at the base of John’s throat. He thinks, hazily, about leaning over and licking a stripe up it.

When he tears his gaze back up to John’s face, he finds John watching him with warm amusement in his eyes, a knowing smile curled loose and a little unfocused against his teeth. Caught out, Alexander blinks and looks away, tries not to paint his guilt across his own face.

“Don’t see why any of those things have to be mutually exclusive,” John says conversationally. Alexander hums his response and is shifting through the muddled tangle of his thoughts to find something else to talk about, something _safe_ , when he’s distracted by a dip in the mattress as John turns onto his side to face him. It’s nothing compared to the distraction of the hand that slides across his waist, comes to rest on his middle, splayed wide. It’s hot, practically burning. It robs him of his breath, and any coherent thought.

He looks back at John, who meets his gaze like a challenge and doesn’t move. Just stays where he is with his arm slung across Alexander, casual and possessive and wrong and everything, _everything._

“John,” Alexander says brokenly, sucking air into lungs that feel like they can’t hold it.

“Yeah. I know.” The disappointment in John’s voice is resigned, and Alexander can’t bear it. Something rises within him, the reckless need to act, to _do_ something. Last time he’d felt like this—when he’d been ready to bare his soul to the world just for the chance to explain himself to Eliza—he’d called John, asked him _what should I do?_

He wants to ask the same thing now. He’s too afraid of what John might say; of what he might not.

John still doesn’t move his hand. Alexander is almost dizzy with the effort of not sliding his hand over John’s own, or rolling towards him to lick into John’s mouth, wine-fuelled and dirty. Eliza, he keeps thinking to himself. Look what happened with Eliza.

“I’m sorry,” Alexander says, because he doesn’t know what else he can say. The happiness that had been floating high in his chest has sunk, hardened into something cold and heavy and dreadful at the base of his spine. He longs to tear it out. John’s face softens, and Alexander wonders if he looks just as stricken as he feels.

“Hey,” John says softly. “C’mere.”

Alexander’s powerless to resist John’s tug, lets himself be pulled towards him and into an embrace. John’s arms wrap around him, and Alexander presses his cheek up against John’s chest, head ducked under his chin so that he doesn’t have to see John’s face. His fingers curl into John’s t-shirt.

“You deserve better than waiting around for me,” Alexander says, dutifully, like the words are learned by rote. They practically are, now, repeated to himself over and over ever since Hercules’ talk with him. He wonders if John heard any of that conversation, whether he’d been outside this very door with his ear pressed against it, desperately trying to hear what Hercules had to say.

Or perhaps he’s better than that—better than Alexander would have been in the same situation—and he’d left well enough alone. 

John’s grip tightens momentarily.

“You don’t get to decide that,” he says with a sigh.

They stay like that, curled up close together—too close, not close enough—until Alexander shifts and sighs, insists that he needs to get home. John releases him reluctantly, and Alexander pretends not to notice the way he hugs his arms to himself afterwards, like he’s trying to cling onto the warmth that Alexander has left behind.

“I’m too drunk to drive you home,” John admits.

“No worries. I’ll walk, it’s not that far.”

“Don’t be stupid. I’ll call you an Uber.” John already has his phone out, but Alexander covers John’s hand with his own, pushes the phone down.

“It’s good,” he says. “You’re good.”

They bicker back and forth about it. John seems intent on walking him home, and it takes Alexander ten minutes to convince him otherwise—to remind him that his apartment is well out of John’s way, that he’ll be just fine walking on his own, and that since John doesn’t have to be anywhere tomorrow morning, he might as well stay at Lafayette’s.

It’s the gentlest argument he’s ever had, full of reassurance and longing and care.

It’s too cold for the thirty-minute walk back to his apartment, though. Neither the alcohol in his veins nor the memory of John’s warmth can keep the feeling in his fingers and his toes; he walks as fast as he can and watches his breath fan out in front of him in the dark night air. He relishes the burn of the cold in his lungs every time he inhales. It reminds him that he’s alive, that these hard choices he’s making are worth something.

The next morning, he wakes curled into one corner of his bed, mouth dry and head not-quite aching, reserving itself for the promise of worse to come later on. Pulling himself into the shower is hard but leaves him feeling marginally more human. He fills his travel cup with coffee, jams a hat onto his head, and trudges out to work. There’s an uneven feeling somewhere in his chest, like something has shifted or gone missing altogether.

He tells himself it’s just his hangover and pretends that the excuse makes any sense at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alexander Hamilton failing to understand his own emotions 2k20!!
> 
> Although I have the bones of this all written out, I keep thinking to myself 'I'll just flesh this out a little' and then adding an extra 2,000 words, so you can probably expect the chapter count to change.
> 
> Please let me know your thoughts and feelings and miscellaneous other things! I love hearing from you guys and it absolutely keeps my motivation up.
> 
> You can also find me on tumblr at seekstrivefind.tumblr.com, come chat shit!


	7. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry that this took longer than expected. Real life smacked me real hard in the face, but I went and saw Hamilton again this Friday and it shook my words loose again!

Three days later, Eliza asks Alexander to meet her at Starbucks—the same Starbucks where she’d found him with Hercules and John. At first, he wonders if it’s an intimidation tactic, and then decides that unless Eliza has changed a great deal, she’s just trying to make him feel comfortable. Choose some neutral, common ground.

God, he _hopes_ she’s just trying to make him feel comfortable.

Determined not to leave anything to chance, he turns up fifteen minutes early and orders for both of them. Eliza turns up barely five minutes later, and he knows it’s not through any concerted effort. She’s early for everything. It’s a combination of who she is inherently as a person, and the good manners instilled in her by her parents. It’s clear that she’s surprised to see him, though. Which is fair, since _his_ inherent characteristics include being way too easily distracted to remember to turn up places, and it’s not like anybody ever took the time to try and instil anything resembling good manners in him.

“You really must be working on change,” she observes. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you early for something before.”

“First time for everything,” he says, with a nonchalant shrug which he hopes conveys a far more relaxed attitude towards the whole situation than he actually feels. A little smile tilts the corners of her lips, and he gets the feeling that she can still see right through him. Still, she doesn’t call him out on it; instead, she accepts the drink he’s bought for her and perches next to him.

He’s glad she doesn’t sit across the table, leaving him feeling like he’s trapped in an interrogation, or an interview. She angles herself towards him, and he feels a little of the nervous tension that he’s been carrying around in his joints ease a little.

“I wanted to say thank you for your letter,” she tells him, after she’s taken a sip of her coffee and let out a contented sigh. “It was… well, actually, it was a lot. I didn’t know what to make of it, at first, so I—”

“—don’t say that you showed it to Angelica,” Alexander says, dully.

“—showed it to Angelica,” Eliza finishes, with a light laugh. Alexander resists the urge to surreptitiously glance around to see whether the eldest Schuyler sister is lying in wait somewhere to take him out at the earliest opportunity.

“What did she have to say about it?” he asks, though he’s fairly certain he won’t like the answer.

“She said it sounded like you were just doing what you needed to survive.”

“Oh.” He’s disappointed by the harsh judgement of someone he’s never met—someone who, these days, he’s been actively hoping to avoid meeting. Then again, what else should he have expected? It’s just a mercy that John had stopped him from publishing the full essay, that he’d helped him pare down the rhetoric and the arguments until it was something personal. A little less polished, perhaps, but honest.

“I didn’t think so,” she adds. “It sounded to me like you were genuinely sorry.”

“Which I am,” he interjects. “You know, just for the record.”

She examines him for a moment, delicate fingers tapping out an arbitrary rhythm against her coffee cup. He bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep himself from mindlessly filling the silence, and fights the urge to let his leg bounce nervously up and down.

“Would you mind if I asked you something? About what you wrote, I mean.”

Alexander wishes he’d been given notice of that question. With some warning, he could have prepared answers that made sense, answers that didn’t come out sounding too brusque or thoughtless, as his words are often wont to do. Maybe that’s exactly why she hadn’t warned him. She knows him well enough; she wants answers from his heart, without the interference of his pen.

“Too much to hope that it’s multiple choice?” he asks, lightly.

She laughs. He scores it as a tiny victory to himself, but she’s not distracted from her questioning, and her smile fades into something more serious.

“Alexander, why did you never tell me any of this?” she asks gently.

Alexander swallows, and thinks of the wounds he’d bared in his letter to her. His father, his mother, his cousin, the hurricane, the struggle—blow after blow that had shaped and changed him, led him step by step to where he is today. None of it excuses the hurt that he’s caused her, but for perhaps the first time, he’d simply wanted someone to understand him, right down to his bones. 

It had always been an unsteady secret tangled in his chest, until he’d laid it out in crisp, clear paragraphs for the whole world to see. For the first time, he was prepared to let them witness the mess of flesh and bone and mistakes that make him up, the thread of fear that has always and will always drive him onwards, upwards.

When John had first arrived to help keep him from the catastrophe of his good intentions, he’d pulled Alexander close and murmured “I’m sorry” into his hair. Alexander had stood there in the circle of John’s arms and held a thousand, thousand things he wanted to say behind the cage of his teeth.

 _It doesn’t matter,_ and _it’s the only thing that matters_ , and _I had a dream my mother smiled at you and me across a crowded street._

“I’ve never—I’ve never wanted to tell anyone before,” he admits, honestly. He curls his fingers together, an intertwined lattice that he examines carefully rather than watching her face. “It’s always been something that I’ve just...carried with me? Sometimes it feels like it’s all I am.” He stops. She says nothing; gives him space to find the words. He’s absurdly grateful. Old memories and old hurts are welling up inside him, poison drawn from a wound he’d thought long-since healed.

“I want to be more than that. I don’t want people to look at me and see my tragedy,” he continues. Risking a glance up at her face, he finds something so painfully tender sketched across it that he wishes that someone else was here to soak it up, to temper it. “I want to earn people’s respect, not their pity.”

A long silence.

“But you were going to tell everyone,” Eliza says softly, her voice a question. Alexander’s head snaps up, and he stares at her dumbly for a long moment. “Lafayette told me,” she admits.

“It mattered,” he says thickly, after a long minute. “John told me it was a bad idea.”

“It was a _terrible_ idea,” Eliza confirms quickly. “I would have been—I don’t even know. But Alexander, the fact that you were prepared to do it…”

She trails off. As she looks at him with gentle concern, he feels something like shame heating his cheeks, and has to look away again. He flinches when he feels her hand on his, covering his fingers with her own. She squeezes. Not sure what else to do, he squeezes back.

“I forgive you,” she says. “Honestly, I forgave you a long time ago. I don’t like to be angry.”

Alexander closes his eyes. When he blows out a steadying breath, he’s sure that there must be a hundred unspoken words tripping form his tongue, escaping from between his teeth like the wreathing smoke from a cigarette, or the fanning white mist of warm breath on a cold day.

“Thank you,” he says, in a voice so small that it’s barely audible. He blinks rapidly two or three times, because he figures that nobody wants to hang out with a crying guy in a Starbucks. Especially not when their relationship is still technically on somewhat shaky ground.

“So, are we going to talk about John?” she asks sweetly.

That rustles up a whole new jolt of emotions. He takes another few seconds to himself before he opens his eyes. She tucks her hair neatly behind her ear, pats him once more on the hand, and then reaches instead for her coffee. Doing her best to normalise things.

“What about him?” he asks, slowly.

“Oh, Lafayette told me about all that, too.”

 _All that,_ he thinks, wryly. She’s always been tactful. Eliza has a way of coaxing even the most reluctant of people to share—not that she ever pushes. And Lafayette, it seems, has a love of meddling; it’s only his good intentions which keep Alexander from irritation. Lafayette likes happy endings, and Alexander can hardly fault him for doing his best to manufacture them wherever he can. 

It’s only a shame that Lafayette is too much of an idealist and a romantic to see when there are insurmountable obstacles in the way.

“I’m trying to be less of a human disaster,” he says, at last.

“And I’m sure everybody’s very proud,” she smiles at him over her coffee. “But I’m not sure I understand. You like him?”

He agonises for only a moment before he throws all caution to the wind. If he’s honest, he’s been desperate to talk about John with someone since they’ve met. Lafayette would probably tell John everything he said. Hercules would probably break his arm, or at least look very disapproving in a quite intimidating way. John is obviously out of the picture.

Eliza, then, is a godsend and an opportunity he can’t afford to pass up.

“Maybe more than anyone I’ve ever known,” he admits in a rush. “I mean, at first he was just a handsome boy I wanted to fu—er, kiss.”

She raises an eyebrow, making it clear that she’s perfectly aware of his last-minute substitution. He forges onwards through his mild embarrassment.

“And it hasn’t been that long, honestly—a month and a half? Maybe a little more—but it feels like I’ve known him forever. We just click, cliche as that might sound. God, Eliza, I’d trust him with anything. It’s mad.”

“And he likes you?” she presses, gently.

“Yeah,” Alexander breathes doubtfully, feeling that familiar pang in his chest, the one that makes him feel hot and cold and guilty and regretful all at once. “Yeah. I mean, he’s the one who brought up the whole kissing thing first. Said if I ever changed my mind—”

He makes an embarrassed gesture. She looks at him with exasperation.

“Honestly, Alexander, I’m not sure I can see what the problem is.”

“Me!” Alexander says, emphatically. “I am very much the problem, Bets—Eliza.” He catches the old nickname when it’s too late, and winces an apology when he remembers her reaction to it last time they were here. She doesn’t seem to mind, waving a hand dismissively. He puts it away for a later conversation; this one is too important to interrupt, and holds the tantalising promise of some answer to his suffering. He gestures between them.

“I mean, this whole thing? This is the problem,” he clarifies. “I don’t want to hurt him. Look at how I hurt you.”

She regards him for a long moment, and then sighs.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’d hurt him,” she says. “You push people away because you’re scared they’ll leave first, that’s what you wrote to me. So you don’t give them the chance. But John—I don’t know, Alexander. If anyone’s going to stick with you, it’s him. He already knows all the things you’ve been so scared to tell people. He’s seen the shitty things you’ve done and he’s still there. Fighting your corner.”

She shrugs a shoulder. Alexander wishes it were all that easy.

“He’s known me two months tops,” he mutters, in a weak attempt at arguing back.

“At some point, Alexander, you’ve got to listen to your own feelings. You said you’d trust him with anything, that you’re closer with him than anyone else _despite_ having only known him for two months. And it sounds—and looks—to me like he feels the same. Literally the _only_ thing holding you back is this fear that you’ll fuck up again, sabotage yourself.”

“I have form, to be fair.”

“You do,” she admits with a small smile. “But a year ago, you wouldn’t have admitted it to me.”

That gives him pause for thought. He tries to imagine himself twelve months ago. Has all that much really changed? Perhaps. He’d cared about Eliza and he’d hurt her anyway, hadn’t given a second thought to it before he’d leaned in and kissed her lips, before he’d pulled her to bed. Fully cognizant of his own failings, he’d never voiced them to her, and never stopped to consider the consequences that he knew full well would follow. It had been the first thing he’d told John. But so what? Just because he’s said it out loud doesn’t mean he won’t do it again.

The real problem is that when he thinks about all this too closely—about wanting John, and all that it entails—he can feel tight panic seizing up his lungs and his brain, leaving him breathless and clueless and totally unable to confront any of it.

“‘Listen to your heart’, that’s your advice?” he asks, because he can feel it creeping up on him now, the taut pressure in his chest. He pushes it back down, like he can hide it somewhere in amongst the rush of breath and pump of blood.

Eliza quirks an eyebrow, and smirks knowingly.

“ _You_ said heart,” she points out. “Not me. Historically speaking, you’ve opted for less romantic organs.” Alexander stares back at her, disgruntled and perplexed and unable to find a witty comeback that feels like it won’t fracture this new and fragile peace between them.

“What should I do?” Alexander asks, plaintively. Desperate for answers. Eliza shrugs; she doesn’t have them, any more than he does.

“Only you can decide that,” she says. “But for what it’s worth, I always thought you were a very brave person. I don’t think you should let fear—especially fear of something that’s entirely in your own control—hold you back.”

“Thanks, Yoda,” Alexander says, sarcasm heavy in his tone. She laughs, high and happy, and he gathers it into his heart. There’s still a string of guilt twined between his ribs, and he’s still not above hiding if Angelica should happen to appear, but he’s fixed this, more or less. Eliza is smiling at him like they’re friends again, for all that he doesn’t deserve it. He lets the relief of it soothe his uncertainty about John.

Tucking away the turmoil seething in his chest, they drink coffee and talk about everything and nothing, and her forgiveness does more to warm him than the heat of the coffee seeping into his fingers through the cup.

* * *

John texts him that evening, when he’s curled up in his narrow bed chewing on his thumbnail and trying not to think about him. He stares at the message on his glowing screen, not reaching out to thumb it open, until the screen dims and then fades entirely to black.

That gathering tension that’s been coiling itself messily around his ribs pulls a little tighter, until he imagines he can hear the protesting creak of bone under the pressure. Eliza’s forgiveness is a relief, but now there’s a hollow void where all his guilt and worry had pooled. He’s unable to stop the insidious drip of thoughts about John filling that hollow instead, gathering drop by heavy drop.

Eliza’s words have been ringing in his head all afternoon. _Fear,_ she’d called it, and he’s been bristling at the implication that he’s scared, that he’s hiding; that keeping himself from John isn’t the act of goodness he’s been framing it as, but something selfish, an act of self-preservation designed to avoid facing the truth of the matter. 

The more he thinks about it—the more messages from John that light up his phone—the more he comes, bit by bit, to the unpleasant realisation that she might not actually be entirely wrong.

That scares him more than anything.

He flips his phone over so that he can’t see the screen, and rolls onto his back to stare unfocused at the off-white ceiling above him. He lets himself imagine kissing John, touching John; the way he’d feel wrapped up in that embrace, the way they’d press themselves together, the way that John’s breath would hitch and stutter, how he’d slide his hands at Alexander’s waist. It’s easy and familiar and what he’s thought of half a hundred times before, furtive fantasies that leave him feeling dirty and ashamed when he’s spent and breathless.

He tries to imagine the _after._

Waking up next to John, maybe, or holding hands in the street. It’s only a couple of weeks until Thanksgiving, would they spend it together? What about Christmas? He thinks about being allowed to touch John whenever he wants, to wrap himself around him, even when their friends are there. He thinks about permanence, about _always_ , about somebody staying close enough to know him, to see everything he is day by day.

That’s harder. It’s new and it’s strange and he can’t make all the pieces fit, his mind skittering away from the images rather than dwelling on them. The enormity of it is too much for him to comprehend, and it sits unnaturally in his imagination, like an unfinished sketch half-abandoned, the lines messy and the proportions off, the details left out altogether.

But just because it’s an unknown doesn’t mean it’s bad, right? And anyway, he’s found plenty of things difficult in his life, he’s always relished a challenge. What’s so different about this?

Shifting his hips on the bed, he stutters out a harsh sigh and tangles his fingers into his t-shirt, trapping them against his chest. Thoughts of John—broad shoulders and hot hands, bare and freckled skin—have stirred the embers of interest into something hotter, as they always do. Tempting as it is to soothe his anxiety with those thoughts and his hand, he knows it will do no good.

Once again, he tries to wrap his head around what could be his, if he were just brave enough to ask for it—and to stick around to keep it. He’s self-conscious of his own hesitation, feels like a sceptic trying his hand at self-affirmation or mindfulness, or some other new-age bullshit.

Experimentally, he tries reshaping those thoughts to centre on Eliza, rather than John. That’s worse, sends _wrongwrongwrong_ skittering through his whole body until he’s tense and uncomfortable. Focusing on John once more, his breathing eases.

It feels significant and it feels like too much to deal with. It’s still early but he’s abruptly exhausted, and he digs frustrated fingers in against his eyes, rubs at them until he sees faint, multi-coloured echoes against his eyelids. He can’t change who he is overnight, he reasons.

Maybe one day, he’ll be able to confront it all without shying back, without the pang of some tender feeling that might be pain or might be nostalgia or might be something altogether, something that he doesn’t yet understand that knocks the picture out-of-focus and off-colour. One day.

And how long will John wait?

The voice in his head sounds suspiciously like Hercules. Alexander burrows himself into his comforter, scrabbling himself under the covers until he’s warm and cocooned, cutting off the outside world entirely. He fumbles for his phone to set an alarm, and sees the notifications with John’s name, sitting and staring accusingly.

Feeling a little guilty, he swipes them away, and stuffs his phone under his pillow. Out of sight of mind, he thinks, and knows already that it will do him no good, and that his sleepless night and anxious dreams will take the shape of John Laurens.

John is already there when Alexander arrives at the lecture hall in the morning, only twenty seconds away from being late. John’s face lights up when he catches sight of Alexander, and Alexander thinks guiltily about the string of messages that remain ignored. He’s tired and he’s confused and most of all he’s nursing the beginnings of a headache. Alexander knows himself well enough to know that he’s weak; that the warmth of John next to him will steal his focus, that his attention will be irrevocably caught by the way that John furrows his brow when he disagrees with the professor, or the way he wrinkles his nose when he fucks up his notes.

Add to that the new thread of panic that accompanies every thought of John—thanks, Eliza—and his mind is made up. He shoots John a reassuring smile and drops into a seat where he stands, four rows back. John frowns, confused and perhaps a little hurt. Alexander pretends not to feel John’s attention still fixed on him as the lecture starts.

Alexander is already up and stuffing his papers into his bag when the lecturer wraps up. John materialises by his side in an instant. His hand flutters by his side for a moment like it wants to reach out and grab Alexander, to pin him in place.

“You good?” he asks, gentle. Alexander blinks at him, remembers how to shape a smile, and swings his bag over his shoulder.

“Sure,” he says. “I gotta get to work, though. Catch you later?”

He squeezes past John and disappears into the throng of chattering students before John has a chance to reply.

Abruptly, life throws everything at Alexander at once, and he’s unspeakably grateful for it. Looming deadlines for his papers and extra shifts at work keep him busy enough that he doesn’t have time to think of John, let alone to see him. Throwing himself into study and work alike, he runs himself ragged.

He works until his eyes sting, until he can’t keep them open anymore, and then falls into bed fully clothed. Sleep is brief, and when he surfaces, rumpled and disorientated, he pours himself into the shower and coffee into his travel cup, and he starts all over again. Doggedly, he pushes himself on and on—just a little longer, just a little farther, just one more paragraph.

Inevitably, John catches him in the library. 

Alexander’s hunched over his laptop and a cacophony of books sprawled out around him on the table. He’s too tired to flinch in surprise when heavy hands fall onto his shoulders, thumbs digging hard against the tense muscles around his spine. Without even needing to turn, he knows that it’s John. In his exhaustion, he forgets to panic, tipping his head back with a sigh, pushing himself instinctively into John’s touch.

“You,” John says in a low whisper that still manages somehow to radiate a stern disapproval, “look like shit, Hamilton.”

“You say the sweetest things.” Alexander tries to focus on his screen, but his eyes refuse to focus. He lets out a breath, tells himself that five minutes can’t hurt, and closes his eyes. John continues kneading his shoulders in silence for a few minutes, patiently prying the stress from Alexander’s aching back. When he finally pulls his hands away and drops down into a chair, Alexander makes a sad little noise that quirks John’s lips up one side. He tangles their feet together under the table.

“When do I need to stage an intervention?” John asks lightly, but Alexander notices the careful note of concern in his voice, not-quite-hidden.

“When I die?” he offers up with a smile. His gaze gets caught on John’s eyes, and Alexander frowns slightly as a thought that seems important slips from his grasp, too quickly for him to recall it. He shakes his head to clear it. “I just have a lot of stuff I need to get done. It’s fine.”

John’s face remains unconvinced. Somewhere under the scattered papers and books bristling with neon sticky notes, Alexander’s phone buzzes, the sound muted. He glances around the table half-heartedly, making no move to find it. John rolls his eyes and digs for it on his behalf.

“No wonder you aren’t answering your messages,” he mutters. He finds the phone, retrieves it. Stares at the screen with a faint look of surprise for a moment. “It’s from Eliza.”

Alexander realises he’d never even told his friends about his meeting with Eliza, that she’d forgiven him. He feels heat rise in his cheeks, and pulls his laptop back towards him determinedly. His eyes latch onto a sentence that he doesn’t like, the wording too ambiguous.

“What does it say?” he asks vaguely as he begins typing, recrafting the words until they’re iron-clad, brook no arguments.

“‘Take a break’,” John reads. His thumb drags down the screen. “She’s sent you the same message every hour for the past… four hours.”

“Mm,” Alexander says in acknowledgement, brows gathering in concentration as he cuts words, rearranges those that are left, hacks his work into something sharp and precise, into a weapon. He pulls a book towards him, flips through the marked pages until he finds the case he’s looking for.

“Alexander,” John says. Alexander blinks up at him, as if surprised to still find him there. 

“What? Yeah, break. After I finish this. Promise.” He reaches over and squeezes John’s knee, brief and reassuring, before returning to his keyboard. John probably says something in response to that, and it sounds like a question, but there’s a reference Alexander needs to find and a phrase turning over in his brain, words gathering in his blood that drive his fingers to movement. Sometime later, he looks back up; John is gone. There’s a bottle of water and a candy bar on the table.

He checks his phone, sees three more messages from Eliza— _take a break, take a break, take a break_ —and nothing at all from John.

Just as suddenly as it had all arrived, everything falls away. Alexander hands his papers in and sleeps for fourteen hours. When he wakes, he pulls up his calendar and finds that he doesn’t have a work shift for two days, doesn’t have another paper due for weeks. Instead of getting up, he only bundles himself deeper into the warmth of his bed.

Without a hundred things to do cluttering his mind, all he can think about is John. John, and the library, and the way their feet had hooked together, the way he’d reached out to touch him without thinking, and never once thought to pull back or be afraid, to censor himself or to panic about some imagined future that may or may not come to pass.

Something feels like it’s on the edge of breaking or cracking open inside him, and whether it’s good or bad, he’s not sure. The warmth of his bed suddenly feels stifling.

He showers, and storms his way through various neglected household tasks—gathering up his laundry, retrieving the coffee cups from around the house and washing them, cleaning the bathroom to keep his hands busy. And all the while, he waits for the thing inside him to snap or burst or implode. It doesn’t.

A few hours later, his phone rings.

“You dead, man?” John asks as soon Alexander answers. Alexander lets out a breath of laughter, collapsing back onto his lumpy couch.

“If I am, no one’s told me.”

“We missed you last night,” John says.

“Ah, fuck,” Alexander says, abruptly recalling that he’d promised to go and hang out at Lafayette’s place, watch them all be deeply competitive at some playstation game he doesn’t pretend to understand. He rubs the heel of his palm against his eye, digging in against the fatigue that’s still chasing him. “Sorry. I passed out hard.”

“I figured,” John says. “Or at least, I hoped. Another day or two and you would have been full zombie.”

“I’m at least forty percent more human than I was yesterday,” Alexander reassures him lightly. He looks over at his kitchen, the next target on his list: it’s scattered with crumbs and plates he’d reused for toast three days in a row, fridge probably in need of a clearout before something in there grows legs and starts trying to escape. Fuck it. “You around?”

“Yeah,” John says, and Alexander can hear the smile in his voice. “I’m around.”

They meet at some hipster deli that John likes. Alexander arrives to find that John has beaten him there. He takes a moment to watch him at the table, head down and messing around on his phone. John grins down at the screen, types something.

Alexander’s phone buzzes. It’s a message from John: he flicks it open to see a picture of a cat sprawled out across a pile of books, tongue out as it sleeps. It’s wearing little, cat-sized glasses. John’s added the caption ‘you’. The hot thing threatening to break in Alexander’s chest shifts and grasps at him, licks up the inside of his ribs as it searches for a way out, but holds.

“You’re a nerd,” he says when he drops down in front of John, voice unavoidably fond.

“ _You’re_ a nerd,” John counters cheerfully. “What are you having?”

They order, and John pays before Alexander can even think to argue. They talk about nothing at all, batting stupid jokes back and forth and coaxing laughter from each other with ease. It seems like a long time ago that Alexander felt horribly jealous of exactly this, of other people’s private jokes and uncomplicated amusement. He gathers up every ounce of it, clings delighted to the feeling.

“It’s good to see you,” John says when their sandwiches are done, nothing but crumbs left on their plates. He’s fiddling with a serviette, rolling and unrolling the thin paper between his fingers, flattening it down. “For a couple of days there I sort of thought you were avoiding me.”

Alexander stares at John—drinks in the face that he’s seen a hundred times before, and wonders if he’ll ever _not_ feel this stupid, flip-flop jolt in his stomach without warning when John smiles or winks or licks dry lips.

“I sort of was,” Alexander admits, with an honesty that makes him feel all-too exposed. John looks up at him, lips parted in surprise. Alexander hurries to explain. “I mean—not in a bad way. It’s just… I don’t know. I talked to Eliza. She gave me a lot to think about.”

“Oh?” John says, casually, not asking but wanting to know all the same. Alexander drops his gaze to where John’s fingers are still folding and refolding the serviette, tattering the edges of it, and doesn’t answer. John doesn’t push, moves past it with a roll of his shoulder. “Done thinking then?”

“Kind of,” Alexander hears himself say. “I think so.”

“Good,” John says, and almost manages to sound certain about it. Under the table, his foot nudges Alexander’s own. “Hercules is having drinks at his place tonight. You coming?”

As gentle as spring’s first tentative touch, the thing in Alexander’s chest breaks, and from it creeps a slow tide of affection, a warm and fragile bird-boned thing with something at its centre that feels like certainty.

“Only if you are,” he says, and John smiles, and the certainty hooks tiny barbs into his heart, and settles down to grow. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will Alexander finally get over himself? Will he be too late? Will Lafayette be absurdly pleased by these developments?
> 
> You know the drill, I'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback or questions or predictions. Hearing from you guys is super motivating and I appreciate your comments so much. Plus, come find me on tumblr at seekstrivefind!


	8. Chapter Seven

They turn up at Hercules’ place together, adrenaline jittering through Alexanders blood for no good reason. Hyper-aware of John by his side after so many days’ absence, some part of him is desperate to reach out and take his hand, just to see how it feels. The rest of him figures that’s the very definition of mixed messages, and is also way too chicken-shit to go through with it. He contents himself with the way that their arms brush together every so often, and the moment when John bumps their shoulders together after a joke, and the warm curl of John’s fingers at his wrist to keep him from stepping out into a road he’d been too absorbed in conversation to notice.

When they arrive, John opens the door to the apartment block with his own key. Alexander swallows hard against the jealousy of that intimacy, and wonders whether he ought to give John his key, too. It’s not like his shoebox apartment is exactly _welcoming,_ being just about big enough for one person comfortably—two only if they’re happy to be wrapped up around each other. But it’s the principle of the thing. John’s been around a few times, mostly just to drag him away from his work but once or twice he’s folded his long limbs onto Alexander’s frayed, second-hand couch, watched movies with him on a dim-lit laptop screen and been too polite to make any really scathing comments about the place.

In comparison to his own place, it must be laughable, a suspicion that Alexander can’t verify because he’s never actually seen John’s place—a realisation which is just now occurring to him. They spend all their time in libraries and coffee shops and at Lafayette’s spacious two-bedroom apartment. Hercules’ roommate reportedly sucks, and his absence is the only reason they’re here tonight. But John lives alone. Maybe it is just as shitty as Alexander’s own, and he’s embarrassed of it.

Or maybe, whispers an unhappy little voice in his bones that sounds like sabotage, John just doesn’t want Alexander there, for some reason.

He’s busy picking at that train of thought, brows pulled low with his frown, when he runs hard into the back of John, who’s stopped abruptly in the doorway.

“Ow,” he says, indistinctly, clutching at his nose. “What the fuck, Laurens.”

He ducks around John, only to feel fingers at his wrist again, firm and not a little urgent. This time, though, there’s no traffic to save him from—there’s only a sharply elegant woman with a fierce expression lighting a fire in her oddly familiar dark eyes, and…. _oh._ All the pieces click into place, and suddenly John’s apartment seems like the very least of his worries. Curling his fingers over John’s, he pries the tight grip from his wrist, throwing out what he hopes is a reassuring smile.

“Bury me with a view,” he mutters, and steps forward with his head held high and his breath chasing itself anxiously from lung to lung. “You must be Angelica.”

“I suppose I must be,” she agrees, coolly. “You must be a new kind of stupid, showing up here after what you did.”

Alexander is painfully, _startlingly_ aware that all eyes are turning towards them. The hush falling over the previously buzzing apartment is obvious, even under the steady beat of the music that’s pouring from the speakers and doing its best to fill the spaces left by the sudden halt in conversations. He doesn’t see Eliza in the small crowd of faces, and he wonders if he’s been lured here under false pretences, just a piece of meat for Angelica Schuyler to chew up and spit back out.

He wouldn’t believe it of his friends, but judging by her expression, he’d believe just about anything of Angelica Schuyler right now.

“I definitely have not exercised the best judgement in the past,” he agrees cautiously. “But I was under the impression that I had been mostly forgiven.”

“By Eliza, maybe. It will take more than one pretty letter to win me over.” Angelica is watching him carefully, judging his every expression and word and reaction. Alexander’s tongue trips into action before asking for permission.

“Firstly, pretty? I’m flattered. Secondly, do you have an idea of how many it _will_ take? Ballpark is fine. I’m really not the best at managing my time and I could do with a heads up if I’m gonna be busy writing for the next three months.” It’s stupid and it’s flippant, but unless he’s very much mistaken that was the ghost of a smile quirking at one corner of Angelica’s mouth. Alexander’s tap-dancing on a landslide, cresting a wave of disaster, but sometimes the universe throws a bone to those who fling themselves towards catastrophe in an entertaining enough way. There’s a (very small) chance he may yet emerge unscathed from the chaos.

“Maybe I should be the one writing letters,” she says primly. “I’ve got plenty to say to you, after all, and threats are so much more satisfying in print. How many newspaper headlines will I have to cut up to spell ‘get fucked, Hamilton’, I wonder?”

And yeah, just like that, Alexander knows exactly where he stands. A smile hooks itself on the sharp edges of his teeth, the challenge rising in his blood. This is his territory, and he excels in it; this is arguing a circle around their ethics lecturer and tripping Jefferson up over his own arguments, and biting scathing commentary at Seabury until he took his little demonstration elsewhere.

“More than would be environmentally responsible, I’m sure,” he shoots back, smooth and with no hint of real malice. This isn’t a fight, this is just a sparring match. “It’s me you’re supposed to be punishing, not the rainforest. Better just tell me here and now.”

He’s almost sure that she won’t, not really. Not in front of all these people. _Almost_ being the key word but hey, no-one ever made it big by relying solely on certainties. And besides, in a twisted sort of way, he’s enjoying this.

“C’mon,” he cajoles, when she says nothing. “Hit me. Well—I mean, I’d rather you didn’t physically hit me, but it’s not like I can actually stop you. I’m not much of a threat. John might be, but from what I’ve heard it’d be a close fight.”

There’s a faint rustle of laughter through the room. John shifts closer, tucking himself against Alexander’s side like he’s actually prepared to throw hands at Angelica Schuyler if it comes down to it. It’s absurd and it’s sweet and it ignites a soft trill of affection high in Alexander’s chest, adding another licking flame to the veritable bonfire that burns there, these days.

“Alexander!”

Eliza’s voice drags Alexander’s focus away from the unmistakable amusement in Angelica’s gaze. Eliza descends on him, pulling him into a warm hug; he doesn’t fail to notice the sharp pinch she digs at her sister’s side as she passes. She sweeps John up in the same rush of affection before turning back to Angelica.

“I hope you’re not being cruel,” Eliza says, a note of disapproval creeping into her words. “I told you, Ange, it’s all water under the bridge.”

“I wouldn’t call it cruelty, as such,” Alexander muses. Angelica tips her head to one side, one perfectly manicured brow quirked and lips pursed.

“I’m holding you to your promise to never hurt her again,” Angelica says, archly. Eliza’s cheek flush a deep pink colour, and her gaze darts between Alexander and Angelica, nervous of confrontation. Alexander’s attitude—all bravado and bluster—abruptly settles.

“Good,” he says, honestly. “I am trying, but I’m also maybe not famous for my choices. I need all the help I can get.”

Angelica looks at him a moment longer, and then, with a _hmm_ , turns away and sweeps further into the apartment. It’s not exactly a victory, as such, but since he’s still got all his extremities attached, Alexander’s willing to call it one.

“Sorry,” Eliza says, reaching out to squeeze Alexander’s arm. “Let me get you both a drink.”

She disappears off through a doorway into what is presumably the kitchen. Around them, people have too hurriedly turned back to their conversations, pretending poorly to mind their own business. Some of them are faces that Alexander recognises, and some are total strangers to him—but he doesn’t doubt that they all know who he is, now.

“Well, that could have gone worse,” John muses.

“I like her,” Alexander says decisively. John gives him a disbelieving look, and then tugs Alexander in the direction of Hercules, who’s leaning up against a wall with a bottle of beer in his hand, listening intently to somebody that Alexander doesn’t know.

“Of course you do, you absolute human disaster,” John mutters, fond and exasperated.

They do the rounds, Alexander dutifully committing names and faces to memory. He hugs Lafayette, lets Hercules ruffle his hair with great reluctance, and pretends not to notice Angelica watching him from the back of the room. Eliza pushes beers into their hands and launches enthusiastically into a conversation about an art show she’d been to. Alexander stands side-by-side with John, both of them pressed together like a unit: John-and-Alexander, or maybe Alexander-and-John, both turning when the other’s name is called.

It feels like everything he’d been so desperately hunting for just a few months ago. At first, he expects it all to come crumbling down at any second—for the room to turn on him suddenly and decide that he doesn’t belong, that he’s intruding. Every time the thought sneaks in, he reaches absently for John, pressing fingers briefly against his arm to reassure himself that he’s still there, by his side. To convince himself that this all real, and that it’s not going anywhere.

The more he drinks, the less the thought plagues him, until it’s gone altogether. He starts to feel warm and light, laughing a little too easily and delighting in the way that John is laughing too. Laughing at his laughter. Another drink, and he starts to feel hemmed-in, too hot. There’s something else, too; it feels like it might be bravery.

“Can we go outside?” he asks John. John, pink-cheeked from the heat of alcohol and so many people clustered in such a small space, doesn’t answer except to take Alexander’s hand and pull him through the apartment. He drops it to shoulder open a window at the back of the hallway, and ducks out onto the fire escape. Alexander follows.

The contrast is immediate. It’s cold out here, winter baring its teeth. The alcohol has dulled the worst of it, but there’s no escaping the nipping wind that creeps its way beneath his too-thin shirt and scrapes teeth across his skin. A violent shiver rattles down his spine.

“Hey,” John says, noticing immediately. “Come here.”

He’s wearing a big hoodie, loose and unzipped, and he wraps Alexander up in it against his chest. They both laugh as he tries to zip it up around him so that they’re both swaddled in it, amusement falling effortlessly from their lips and mingling in the narrow space between them. They laugh more when he fails because Alexander is small but not that small, and John’s fingers are drunk-clumsy and cold.

Still feeling a little off-kilter—the dense little point of certainty still growing tremulously in his chest, buoyed by the bravery that has crept in during the past few hours—Alexander grows quiet for a long moment. Above him, John frowns slightly.

“You okay?” he asks, softly.

“Yeah,” Alexander says slowly. “I just—wanted a moment.”

“I can leave if you want,” John tells him, and means it too, because John is good like that, less selfish than Alexander. John didn’t push it when it seemed like Alexander was avoiding him, and John wouldn’t push it now, if Alexander told him he needed some time alone. But that’s _not_ what Alexander needs, and he makes an offended noise at the back of his throat, wiggles a little closer and sneaks his arms around John’s waist under the hoodie, cheek pressed to John’s chest.

He can’t rally enough focus to find John’s heartbeat, but he imagines that it’s beating just the same as his—the rhythms matched, irrevocably tied together. This closeness is more intoxicating than the drinks, and he’s hyper aware of John’s hands slung low and lazy against the small of his back.

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Alexander asks curiously. John groans, and Alexander feels the sound reverberate through his own body.

“Going home, I guess.” John sounds tired when he talks about it. “I don’t mind, but it’s a long way to go just to overeat and feel mildly inadequate, you know?” Alexander squeezes John tighter for a moment, almost without realising.

“You couldn’t just do Thanksgiving in New York?”

“We do sometimes. But Lafayette’s going to stay with Washington this year, and Herc’s family are in town.”

“With me, I meant,” Alexander says. John goes very quiet and still in his arms. Alexander swallows and takes a breath, feeding the flame of the bravery until it’s white-hot at the edges. He pulls back just a little so that he can look up at John’s face, and finds that John’s expression is tender and almost awed. Alexander wants to reach out and touch it, to run a finger along John’s cheekbone.

And so, he does. John swallows visibly.

“You really think you can beat my sister’s home-cooking?” John asks, and Alexander thinks that he might be fumbling for time, for solid ground.

“Nope,” Alexander admits easily. “I make a mean grilled cheese, but that’s about it. Got nothing to offer you but me.”

John’s eyes are searching his, hard-focused. John knows where the line is, where it’s always been; he’s toed it a few times but he’s never stepped over it. Right now, he looks like he’s trying to decide whether he should. Alexander feels the caged thing in his chest claw at his throat. He unlocks the prison of his teeth, breathing out a trembling breath and watching his caution slip away into the cold, night air in a faint, pale mist from his lips.

“Would it be weird if I kissed you right now?” Alexander asks.

He leans up, pushing himself onto the balls of his feet. John’s lips are soft, slack in their surprise. Alexander’s fingers curl at John’s neck, tracing feather-light strokes across the freckled line of it at which he’s so often marvelled. John’s own fingers tighten reflexively as his back, pull him closer. Alexander feels his lips part, hitch a breath half-trapped in his chest. He forces himself to stop, to wait. Patience. Not his strong suit, but something he’s been practising for long enough with John Laurens.

“That depends on your intentions,” John mumbles against his lips, the movement of the words a soft mockery of a kiss that draws another shiver up the line of Alexander’s spine, nothing to do with the cold. “I’m still the same hopeless romantic.”

“I don’t think you’re hopeless,” Alexander says.

“ _Alexander._ ”

John lifts his hand, curls fingers under Alexander’s chin to hold his gaze, thumb grazing his bottom lip. Alexander wants to flick out his tongue, to catch it between his lips. He resists.

“I don’t know how to be a hopeless romantic,” Alexander says, honestly. “But I’m sort of hoping you can teach me.”

John kisses him.

Alexander’s breath is stolen from him all at once, plucking itself from his lungs and dragging every ounce of oxygen from his blood. The knot that’s been spooling inside him since the moment he met John unravels all at once, sending the ache it’s harboured spinning out through his body. Every part of him feels giddy, untethered.

John kisses him like he’s searching for something. The part of lips is chased with the firm curl of tongue licking in behind Alexander’s teeth. John cradles his face with both hands, crowds him up against the cold brick wall, and kisses with his whole body. Alexander feels dizzy with it. His own fingers can’t settle, clinging first at John’s neck and then grasping his shirt, skating across the broad planes of chest and itching to push themselves under to walk their way across smooth skin.

When at last they part, they don’t go far; they stay close, sharing ragged breaths of the same frigid air.

“Okay,” John says, hoarsely. Alexander laughs, bordering on wild.

“Okay,” he agrees. “Question: will anyone notice if I sneak you down this fire escape and spirit you away?” John’s gaze seems to catch on something, and he clears his throat a little self-consciously, shuffles his feet without actually moving any further from Alexander.

“Probably,” he says.

“Probably,” agrees Hercules from just behind them, just the other side of the open window they’d climbed out of. Alexander startles, and John sweeps a soothing hand up his back. Hercules is leaning on the window frame, watching them unashamedly with a raised eyebrow. “I came to tell you to close the damn window, you absolute heathens. It’s freezing out.”

“Is it?” Alexander asks airily. His heart is thundering, adrenaline and affection and the hot press of John’s hands against him. “I hadn’t noticed.”

John snorts. Hercules hooks his fingers into the frame, pulls it almost all the way closed, leaving just enough of a gap that they’ll be able to slide it open again later. He taps twice on the glass with a knuckle, and gestures _I’m watching you_ at Alexander.

Then, he gives them a thumbs up, and disappears.

“Has anyone ever told you that Hercules is almost distressingly protective of you?” Alexander asks, thoughtfully.

“It’s been noted,” John says. They both stare pensively at the window for another moment, both a little too afraid to address the way they’re pressed up against each other, tangled up together. Then, still high on beer and bravery, Alexander leans in to mouth a kiss against the side of John’s neck, scrapes teeth across his pulse point and chases it with a broad sweep of his tongue. John makes a strangled noise, tipping his head back.

“Do you have any idea,” Alexander asks, tucking his words against John’s hot skin, weaving them in between constellations of freckles, “just how hard not-kissing you has been?”

“Pretty sure I can relate,” John says. His fingers flex at Alexander’s hips, and his voice is strained, tight at the edges, holding desperately onto his control. Alexander delights in it, wants to kiss and touch and lick until that careful control falls away. Not now, he tells himself. Not on a fire escape in the cold, late-November air, not while their friends are inside probably gossiping about them doing exactly this.

Later.

The word tastes new and unfamiliar. It brings with is a reflexive jerk of discomfort that he chases determinedly away. _Later_. They have all the time they want, if he just stays to keep it.

“Come on, then,” Alexander sighs. John grumbles but follows him over to the window, plastering himself up against Alexander’s back and pressing a kiss to his shoulder, his neck, the corner of his jaw. It takes all the self-control that Alexander has to open the window and pull them through, closing it behind them.

They kiss again, gentler this time. Reverent. Alexander feels fragile and precious and already shattered, each inhale piecing him back together only for John to take him right back apart. John laces their fingers together as they return to the party. Alexander can’t stop smiling.

Neither can Lafayette, who beams at them from across the room with a complete lack of subtlety, making it obvious enough that Hercules has reported back on what he’d witnessed. Eliza, too, catches Alexander’s eye and gives him a warm little smile, her eyes flickering to where his hand is joined with John’s He grins back. Mouths a _thank you._

They have another drink and tuck themselves up against each other, sharing a bottle and revelling in being allowed to touch, to hold—a hundred little gestures and each one feels like a privilege, like a treasure. Feels like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They did the thing! They kissed!
> 
> Chapter count updated to account for the epilogue I'm working on which just didn't feel like it fit well tacked onto the end of the chapter. Might have to up the rating when it's published, we'll see >.>
> 
> Thoughts! Feelings! Wordless screams! I want to hear them all :) 
> 
> Find me on tumblr, seekstrivefind, and you can hear all about the fake dating au I'm thinking about working on after this!


	9. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating went up. Be gentle, it's a long time since I wrote this sort of thing.

John’s apartment is spacious and modern. It’s a conspicuous display of wealth gifted directly from his father; John’s gently embarrassed of it, but he also can’t really afford to refuse it. And so—despite the fact that he’s lived there for a long while, now—it still feels vaguely impersonal. There’s few signs of John spending much time there, and fewer still personal touches. A couple of photos are pinned to his fridge with magnets, but otherwise the shelves and walls are bare. Inside his closets and drawers, many of his belongings are still stored in boxes, like he’s expecting to up and leave at any moment.

Alexander’s presence makes it feel a little less like a place he happens to sleep in, and a little more like a place he wants to be. In only two or three short visits, he’s already left his mark. John finds the shredded remains of a receipt he’d been idly toying with scattered across the coffee table. There’s two coffee-stained mugs on the counter, instead of just one. There’s a copy of a law textbook that doesn’t belong to him, bristling with bookmarks and notes, that’s taken up residence on his dining table.

When Alexander is here, John feels more at home in the apartment than he ever has.

Alexander, on the other hand, maintains something of the skittish animal about him when he’s there. His speech, always rapid, accelerates until his nervous conversation is barely comprehensible, and John can barely get a word in edgeways. He seems to have trouble staying still, never settling in one place for more than half an hour. Even John’s soothing touches—tangling their fingers together, or sliding the flat of his palm against Alexander’s lower back in the way that John has discovered makes him sigh with comfortable contentment—can’t hold him for long. He won’t stay the night.

John is not generally the most patient of men. In the case of Alexander, he’s prepared to tease out the same patience he’s been cradling close in the months since they met a little further if it will let him settle into this, to learn to trust himself. And anyway, there are plenty of silver linings.

Like the way that Alexander seems to lose all concepts of personal space—dropping into the seat next to John in lectures without leaving an inch between them, their legs pressed together from hip to knee; curling his fingers idly over John’s thigh without seeming to realise he’s doing so, and leaning close to tip words on warm breath right into the shell of John’s ear.

Or the way that Alexander kisses him, pulling him close by the shirt every time, licking sly and dirty in behind John’s teeth regardless of where they are. The first time he does it in front of Hercules and Lafayette, John is left pink-cheeked and breathless, and finds Hercules staring determinedly in the other direction when they part.

“Oh, my,” Lafayette says, faintly, and then clears his throat and clumsily changes the subject.

John’s pretty sure that Alexander knows exactly what he’s doing, too; it’s obvious in the dangerous smirk on his lips and the hand that slides into John’s back pocket and rests there, the heat of it burning through the denim of John’s jeans.

But in the end, John’s only human. For all his open displays of affection, it’s easy enough to see that Alexander is still nervous of himself, convinced that he might yet throw this all away. John wants nothing more than to show him that he has nothing to be afraid of. It’s not even that he’s chasing after sex, though he can’t deny that he’d be anything other than eager if it was offered. No, what he’s craving is a softer intimacy—feet tangled together under bedsheets, waking up with Alexander curled next to him, drinking coffee together on the couch before they head out to classes or work or wherever they happened to be going.

"Can we talk about  _ anything  _ else," Hercules pleads flatly one evening at the bar while Alexander is at work. "We get it: you want to dick him within an inch of his life—" 

John almost chokes on his drink. 

"That's not—I didn't  _ say _ —" he objects, unable to splutter out a full protestation. He can feel his cheeks heating. 

"You didn't need to," Hercules says dryly. John turns to Lafayette. 

"I didn't say that, right? You heard me  _ not _ say that."

"If he is scared of your bedroom, you could always try the couch," Lafayette says, airily. John knocks back the last of his drink and stands, slamming the empty glass back onto the table just a little too hard. 

"You're both the worst," he says firmly. 

"Or the back seat of your car! I hear this is something Americans do!" Lafayette calls after him. John flips him off over his shoulder as he leaves, and spends the rest of the evening sprawled across his couch, typing out half a dozen messages to Alexander that all get deleted in the end.

The next morning, John finally calls his dad.

“I see,” is what Henry Laurens says in a measured tone when John tells him that he’s not coming home for Thanksgiving this year. It’s always hard to interpret his tone over the phone, and John chews on his thumbnail for a long moment before he speaks again, waiting for anything else.

“I have a friend who has nowhere to go,” John explains. “I promised I’d stay with him.”

“Ah,” Henry says. There’s another silence as they each wait for the other to elaborate. Henry breaks it first. “You’re welcome to bring him here, you know. Plenty of space at the dinner table.”

John tries to imagine Alexander, who’s still worrying about the emotional consequences of sharing a bed, being invited into his childhood home to meet his dad and his siblings, for Thanksgiving.

“He has to stick around for work,” John says, which at least has the benefit of being true, even if it is an excuse. “Maybe next year.”

“I hope so,” Henry says, and John can practically hear him struggling to find a way to ask what John means by ‘friend’ without seeming too intrusive, screening his words before they’re spoken to try and avoid inadvertent offence. John changes the subject before he strains himself, because it’s nice that his dad tries, but doesn’t make it any less awkward to sit through.

The conversation drags—circles endlessly around his grades and his studies and his goals and his plans, so that it’s a relief when it’s finally over. John stares at his phone for a minute after the screen goes dark, and then grabs a hoodie and his keys, and heads out.

Alexander answers the door in sweatpants that are too long for him, a faint crease between his brows that John recognises as mild frustration—most often appearing when he’s wrestling with a paper or article. It smoothes itself when Alexander sees him, the faint downturn at the corner of his lips twitching instead upward.

“Hey,” he says warmly, and before John has time to reply Alexander is pressed up against him, fingers hooked into the neck of his hoodie to pull him down far enough for their lips to meet. John’s hands fit themselves instinctively against Alexander’s hips, thumbs swiping against the bare skin that’s been uncovered as Alexander pushes himself up onto his toes. Alexander kisses him like he always does: eager and pushy and impatient. John laughs into it, lets Alexander coax their tongues together and drag his teeth against John’s lower lip.

“Your neighbours are gonna be scandalised,” he mumbles when he gets the chance, breathless from the sharp, hot feeling in his stomach that seems to have reached up and punctured his lungs.

“What’s new?” Alexander asks, and grins shamelessly. John fights the urge to lean down and kiss the smile from his lips. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I came to tell you to pack a bag, spend the weekend at mine.” Behind John’s ribs, his heart stutter-stops when Alexander’s hands freeze in their journey to tuck themselves up under John’s hoodie. He keeps his expression casual. Alexander swallows.

“I have to work Sunday,” Alexander says, and the carefully pitched casual tone doesn’t quite land. John wrinkles his nose. Alexander kisses it.

“I’ll drive you,” John says. He brings one hand up to brush a loose strand of hair from Alexander’s face, and lets it linger. Despite himself, his next words come out as a soft plea. “Come home with me.”

“—okay,” Alexander agrees, after a long moment of silence, and relief hits John like a wave.

It’s already getting late by the time they make it back to John’s apartment. They burn their fingers on grilled cheese straight from the pan. They tangle themselves together on the couch, John trapping Alexander against him with wandering hands and soft kisses. Light from the TV spills across the coffee table, the low canned laughter from a comedy special tumbling unregarded over them.

When they kiss, it’s slow and lazy and unhurried, hands creeping beneath shirts, walking themselves along waistbands, lingering just because they can. Netflix judges them silently:  _ Are you still there? _ The question goes ignored.

John has never felt wound so tight. Alexander slides onto his lap and is pliant and eager and impossible beneath his fingers. Every time John thinks they’re fitted as close together as they can possibly be, Alexander finds some other piece of himself to press against him, each fit more perfect than the last.

John is awestruck by the quiet tension building between them, electric. Alexander leans into every touch, arching to follow the path of John’s fingers up his spine, across his neck, thumb resting briefly in the hollow at the base of his throat. John can  _ feel _ Alexander’s breath hitch, catch under his touch and send his pulse tumbling unsteady beneath hot skin.

“Alexander,” John murmurs. It’s half admiration, the heat of the syllables curling his vowels just a fraction closer to South California, and half a question that he can’t quite find the words to frame. One broad palm rises to cradle Alexander’s face. Alexander hums his answer, tips his head to the side, leaning into John’s touch, and catches John’s thumb between his lips. Teeth graze across John’s knuckle and the wet heat of Alexander’s tongue curling against the pad of the digit draws a surprised noise from low in John’s throat. Alexander smirks around it.

Something snaps, like Alexander’s touches have been building a charge on John’s skin that has become something critical, arcing and crackling out into the air between them. John sprawls himself back across the couch without grace, dragging Alexander flush on top of him with a firm grip against his neck and hip.

“Fuck,” Alexander gasps, one hand flying out to steady himself against the couch at the sudden movement, the other splayed wide against John’s chest. His dark eyes are bright and his pupils blown wide. It takes every ounce of John’s restraint not to start tearing at clothes.

“If I take you to bed,” John says, voice low and rough and strained, “will you still be there in the morning?”

“That depends,” Alexander says, trying and failing to feign disinterest as John leans up and drags his teeth across Alexander’s earlobe. His hips stutter forward, his breathy moan curling around John’s own. “Is breakfast provided?”

John huffs a breath of laughter, presses a sharp canine into his tongue in a final, desperate effort to keep his cool, but still can’t help the way his fingers slide themselves beneath Alexander’s jeans, digging almost too-hard against the curve of soft skin they find there.

“As long as by ‘breakfast’ you mean ‘coffee and stale cereal’, sure.”

Alexander rolls his hips at John’s insistent touch, and leans up to drag teeth and tongue along the line of John’s jaw. John’s almost painfully aware of the way they’re lying on the couch, grinding like a couple of teenagers—and yet, he’s never felt this desperate before, his chest all tied up in knots and his breath too short, every fibre of his being longing for  _ more _ .

“And here I thought you said you were a romantic,” Alexander says, and at least his voice sounds just as laboured as John’s own. But the word,  _ romantic _ , suddenly soothes some of the urgency clawing its way through John. He catches Alexander’s lips with his own, tender and almost chaste. He peppers kisses across Alexander’s skin—face and cheeks and nose and forehead, smiling at the laughter they cause and fingers tightening when Alexander wriggles against him.

“I have everything I need to sustain me right here,” he says, as straight-faced as he can manage; he lasts about half a second before his lopsided grin breaks through. He slides his fingers through Alexander’s hair. “Romantic enough for you?”

“John?” Alexander murmurs against his lips, not-quite a kiss, but the promise of one. “Take me to bed.”

John’s gaze is tender and relieved and a hundred other things, all tangled up in the sweetness of the moment. There’s a dread-filled moment where he knows that he’s about to say something stupid. Words push themselves up his throat without his permission, batter at the cage of his teeth, not caring that they’ll send Alexander spiralling back into a panic of  _ too much, too soon. _

Alexander saves him from himself by pushing a hand impatiently between them, clever fingers flicking open the button of John’s jeans and dipping below the denim to palm John’s hard length through the cotton of his boxer briefs. The words turn to a strangled, breathy noise before they tumble from his lips, a series of incoherent sounds as his head slams back against the couch cushions, neck and spine arching into the touch.

“Fuck,” John says, and surprises himself by just how wrecked he already sounds. 

“That is kinda what I was hoping for, yeah,” says Alexander, who even with his hand wrapped around John’s dick and a pretty pink flush colouring his cheeks can’t resist being a smartass. John sits abruptly, one arm wrapping around Alexander’s waist to balance him against the sudden movement, and then he practically lifts him to his feet as he stands. Alexander, hand now twisted awkwardly between them, makes a soft little noise as John practically manhandles him. John has every intention of exploring the implications of that, later.

_ Later _ . Right now, he urges Alexander towards the bedroom. It’s an ungraceful dance—neither wanting to put an inch of space between them, John’s jeans slowly sliding down his thighs, Alexander’s hands trying to be everywhere at once.

Alexander tugs impatiently at John’s shirt, hands pushing the fabric up but too dedicated to dragging across abdomen and chest to actually divest him of it. John makes an impatient noise and reaches back to pull it off just as he shoulders the bedroom door open. Three things happen in quick succession: the shirt catches on his ponytail, leaving his head stuck in the tangled fabric; the door ricochets back off the wall and slams into his side; Alexander’s hands abandon him for the first time as he stumbles sideways.

“Jesus,” Alexander says, but he’s laughing. He catches up with John, slides a soothing hand around to John’s side where the door had swatted him. After a moment of struggle, John’s face emerges from the knot of his shirt. “You okay?”

“Ow, yeah, fine,” John says breathlessly, and drops his shirt, fingers already darting out to pull Alexander’s own up and over his head. Alexander acquiesces, arms lifting. John's already pulling him back in for a desperate, searching kiss, laughing into Alexander's laughter. 

Alexander pushes John's jeans down, and John mercifully doesn't stumble on them as he kicks them off.

"God, you're beautiful," Alexander mumbles, hands skating down John's arms, across the flat planes of his ribs and stomach, dragging up his thighs. It's so unexpectedly tender, the emotion in the words so raw and open, that for a moment John is thrown by it. Alexander may be one for words, but John has always relied on actions to speak for him; he walks them both back towards the bed, anchors an arm around Alexander and half lifts and half lays him down. 

John's fingers hook into Alexander's pants and underwear together and then pull too hard, dragging him half a foot down the bed with a yelp before he can wriggle out of them. 

"Patience is a virtue," Alexander says in a pious tone that has no place in this bedroom. 

"Which neither of us possess," John reminds him, eyes roaming hungrily across the sight of Alexander, naked and flushed and wanting. And then he's nudging Alexander's thighs apart, thumbs digging divots into soft skin and head ducking to run his tongue up Alexander's hard length, taking him into his mouth without warning or preamble. 

If John had thought that might shut him up, he's swiftly proved wrong. Alexander spills a litany of incomprehensible sounds from his mouth, fingers tugging at the loose mess of John's curls and scrabbling against his scalp. John hears his name, hears  _ yes  _ and  _ good  _ and  _ more  _ and half a dozen other desperate expletives. He doesn't have the presence of mind to catalog them all, to pay enough attention to map them out with matching touches or curl of tongue. There's only just enough focus left for him to chase them, tease them from Alexander any way that he can manage. 

"Want you," Alexander says after an indeterminate mess of moments that John can't parse—seconds or minutes or lifetimes. John pulls back, lips wet and thumbs fitted at the sharp slope of Alexander's hips to keep him in place. "John, please, I want you, need you—" 

John could never refuse Alexander anything. He sits back on his heels, watches Alexander watch him finally push his own underwear down, head tipping back and breath hissing from between his teeth at the cool whisper of air against heated skin. 

He can't resist working his way up Alexander's body with soft touches and kisses. An experimental scrape of teeth across a nipple earns him something like a whine, fingers twisting in his hair almost too-hard, the not-quite-pain grounding him hard and sudden. 

"Not much of a talker, huh?" Alexander asks when John is finally over him, their faces inches from each other. Alexander isn't shy about kissing John despite where his mouth has just been, licking into John's mouth with an eagerness that's intoxicating. 

John half-chases the kiss when it breaks, swallows hard and a little self-conscious. 

"Alexander," is all he can think to say. Everything else is pointless. Alexander's smile spreads languid and delighted. John leans down to press a reverent kiss against his lips, punctuating each of his words with another. "My dear, darling Alexander."

It's hopelessly adoring, embarrassingly emotional. All at once, John regrets opening his mouth, mortified at having let himself wander where he’d promised himself he wouldn’t. For all that Alexander is easy with his affection and easy with his words, he’s never combined the two, and John’s been careful to follow his lead, scared that he might spook at any moment and pull away. But Alexander only slides his hands from John’s hair to cradle his face instead, and leans up to kiss the corner of his mouth.

“This is very nice,” he says sincerely, fixing his gaze on John’s. “But you’ve got about five seconds before I take the situation into my own hands. So to speak.”

The fear in John’s chest unspools and he laughs, reaches over to fumble at the drawer of his bedside table. “Pushy,” he chastises.

“You really surprised?” Alexander asks, and then cuts off any comeback John might have by hooking a leg over John’s own, rolling his hips up. And no, John’s not surprised, not in the least but he is hopelessly, utterly,  _ uselessly _ in love with one Alexander Hamilton. 

In the end, even Alexander’s urgency ebbs, and something gentler washes over them like the tide. They cradle something brand new and bird-boned in the slight spaces between sweat-slick skin, all too aware of its vast potential, all too scared to startle it to flight. They wrap it up in the oncoming dark of night, in John’s quiet breaths and gasps, in Alexander’s endless refrains, and let it grow.

* * *

John wakes.

In an ideal world, he’d wake warm and content and aching, almost too happy to bear, with Alexander tucked against his side. Instead, he sweeps a bleary and confused arm out to find only cooling bed sheets for company. His mind takes a moment to allow a stab of alarm to pierce his lethargy, before it registers the high-pitched shrieking of the smoke detector.

He manages to rouse himself to concern. He trips on the tangled bedsheets as he tries to launch himself on the bed, and lies on the floor for a few seconds before he manages to regain his bearings. Hopping into a pair of hastily snatched sweatpants, one leg at a time, even as he hurries towards the kitchen, he finds Alexander.

There’s a pan in the sink, still smoking. The air is a haze of smoke and steam, stinging John’s eyes. Alexander is frantically waving a dishcloth under the detector, eyes wide and hissing frantic curses in a revolving patois of French and English. His hair is a mess, bundled at the back of his head in a great hurry. He’s back in his crumpled sweatpants, and he’s wearing a t-shirt that could not more obviously be John’s, overlarge on his small frame. At the juncture of shoulder and neck, there’s something that might be a shadow or might be a bruise, sucked into smooth skin mere hours ago.

It’s a ridiculous scene. John folds it carefully into his heart, even as he shuffles up behind Alexander and slings an arm around his waist, reaches up and holds the reset button until the keening noise stops, leaving a faint and ghostly impression of its noise echoing in John’s ears.

“—good morning,” John says, amusement curling warm against his words, voice still gravelly from sleep. A glance is enough to confirm that there is a bruise nestling just by the neck of Alexander’s t-shirt. John brushes his lips against it.

“Okay, so,” Alexander says, leaning back against John’s bare chest and folding his arms over John’s own, holding it in place. “Breakfast seemed like A Gesture. The romantic kind. And there was some bacon in your fridge that looked passable and I can  _ do _ bacon, but then I got a little distracted with a thought I had to write down, and—”

“Come back to bed,” John says. 

“But my gesture,” Alexander says, a little forlornly. He turns in John’s arms, hums his pleasure at the bare skin his hands find, skimming across John’s ribs and raising goosebumps in their wake. He winces at something, and John looks down to see a bruise of his own, a faint purplish mark low on his ribs where the door had ricocheted off him. He huffs a laugh at the memory.

“You’re here,” John says, softly. He kisses Alexander, first on one cheek then the other. The tip of his nose. His lips. His thumbs fit perfectly at Alexander’s hips, like they belong, like they’ve been waiting just to find this place to rest. “That’s all the gesture I need.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John Laurens is an absolute sap, pass it on.
> 
> I like a little realism to my sex scenes. Sometimes the door smacks you when you're trying to get into to the bedroom. Sometimes you get overenthusiastic and fall off the bed. Sometimes your girlfriend tries to quiet you with a hand over your mouth to keep her housemate from hearing you during sex but misses and nearly takes your eye out. All very non-specific things that could happen to absolutely anyone and not just, you know, me.
> 
> I hope you've all enjoyed this! Please do let me know what you think, especially since I'm a little self-conscious about this chapter. If you've been reading along and commenting, thank you so much for your encouragement. If you're reading this when it's already complete, please know that I still read and respond to comments, and that they mean everything to me!
> 
> Working on a Lafayette/Laurens piece at the moment, and then the self-indulgent fake dating piece I've been promising. Might be a while as I've pretty much decided multi-chapter isn't for me, so I'll probably post the whole thing at once. In the meantime, come find me at seekstrivefind.tumblr.com!


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